--- title: "Scientists Discover Closest Known Black Hole to Earth" description: "Earthlings, meet your celestial neighbor: an absolutely massive black hole, which is lying dormant in a nearby binary star system." date: "2022-11-07" modified: "2022-11-07" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-discover-closest-known-black-hole-to-earth" categories: - "Astrophysics" - "Black Holes" - "Space" tags: - "binary star system" - "black hole" - "gaia" - "the digest" --- # Scientists Discover Closest Known Black Hole to Earth ![Earthlings, meet your celestial neighbor: an absolutely massive black hole, which is lying dormant in a nearby binary star system.]() *\Image: Getty Images\* ## New Neighbor Earthlings, meet your new — well, newly discovered — celestial neighbor: an absolutely massive black hole. According [to *The New York Times*](), it's ten times bigger than our Sun, and sitting roughly 1,600 light years away from our Pale Blue Dot in the constellation Ophiuchus, it's the closest to our home planet ever discovered. Considering that the next-nearest black hole ever found is about 3,000 light years away from us, the discovery, as detailed in a [paper]() published last week in the *Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society*, is pretty remarkable. But before you get at all NIMBY about the guy, don't worry. It's currently slumbering, lying dormant in a binary star system called GAIA BH1. And according to its discoverers — a team led by Kareem El-Badry, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics — its existence might suggest that of many others, sleeping in similar star systems. "This is the nearest known black hole by a factor of three," reads the paper, "and its discovery suggests the existence of a sizable population of dormant black holes in binaries." ## Sleeping Giant Per the paper, El-Badry and his team first caught wind of the sleepy space demon in question by way of the European Space Agency's GAIA spacecraft, which precisely tracks the movement of Milky Way stars. Using GAIA data, the researchers were able to tell that one of GAIA BH1's stars was, um, *jiggling,* a sign that a powerful — though invisible — force, like a dormant black hole, might be afoot nearby. The team then utilized Gemini North telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii in order to examine the speed and rhythm of the cosmic jiggling. As the *NYT* reports, this is the same technique used by astronomers when analyzing the size of star-orbiting exoplanets, which causes a similar star wobble. Ultimately, the scientists' calculations support the notion that this binary system is in fact home to a hidden, slumbering star-guzzler, which orbits a sun quite similar in size to our own. And while this discovery might pose more questions than it answers in the short term, the researchers are hoping that this revelation leads to a number of similar findings. "It poses many questions about how this binary system was formed," El-Badry said in [a statement](), "as well as how many of these dormant black holes there are out there." **READ MORE:** *[Astronomers Find a Black Hole in Our Cosmic Back Yard]()* \[*The New York Times*\] **More on black holes:** *[Black Hole Spotted Burping up Material Years after Eating a Star]()* ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()