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MarkHamillsrightnut t1_iu9r071 wrote

Twelve times the mass of our Sun and located about 1,550 light-years from Earth. Saved you a click.

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davew111 t1_iu9w77d wrote

So the other side of town (astronomically speaking). "In our own backyard" would be Alpha Centauri or Barnards Star kind of distances.

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Redbelly98 t1_iubmg81 wrote

>"In our own backyard" would be Alpha Centauri or Barnards Star kind of distances.

The expression is quite vague with lots of wiggle room. 1550 light-years is still a lot closer than the black hole at the center of the galaxy, which is around 30,000 light-years away.

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AIpheratz t1_iuafzgh wrote

12 times the mass of the sun is not a "monster" black home. At all.

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LaunchTransient t1_iubazrn wrote

To my knowledge that's actually quite a small one. The smallest detected so far is around 3 solar masses, so 12 is not all a "monster".

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AIpheratz t1_iucjx7k wrote

Exactly, there are black holes of millions, even billions solar masses, 12 is a floating spec of dust.

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carbonqubit t1_iub3c6j wrote

So, about 16.5X closer than Sagittarius A* and 0.0003% its mass.

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Kwintin01 t1_iubaaky wrote

Cosmically speaking isnt 12 times our sun pretty small?

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Bensemus t1_iubtu1a wrote

That would be quite massive. Our Sun is actually a massive star relative to what’s out there. It’s on the top 10% my mass. The vast majority of stars are tiny.

However compared to how big stars can get even ours is quite small.

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RhoynishPrince t1_iu9u0zv wrote

So... Are we f* or not?

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Bogmanbob t1_iuamuhy wrote

You know if it drifts here we’re launching 1,000 plus nukes at it regardless of what science says.

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TrumpdUP t1_iu9uj3b wrote

Yes. It’ll probably get here in 5-100 years so we might as well prepare accordingly now.

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justafang t1_iu9vdft wrote

Prepare to face oblivion by being crushed by gravity?

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TheHappyMask93 t1_iua3wnu wrote

Prepared to see the back of your arse while facing forward and also something involving spaghetti? Not sure, only skimmed this part in class

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JimJamYimYam t1_iua5omf wrote

We'll definitely be swallowed by our own buttholes but I believe the spaghetti dinner is optional.

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OldManJimmers t1_iuah5bc wrote

NGL this is sounding pretty good

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JimJamYimYam t1_iualnki wrote

Wearing your own balloon knot like a necklace is significantly underrated. Also, topless bread sticks.

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Bighabs27 t1_iudlcq8 wrote

Can we have linguine rather than spaghetti? I prefer the texture

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1pencil t1_iuaih8c wrote

Better stock up on toilet paper then

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imsahoamtiskaw t1_iu9zk1r wrote

>Astronomers estimate that 100 million black holes roam among the stars in our Milky Way galaxy, but they have never conclusively identified an isolated black hole.

That's an insane number. Also glad none if them is close to us lol.

Imagine being worried about the SMBH at the center and some other one creeps up towards you (or a 3+ stellar mass one collapses in on itself and forms beside you as a neighbor).

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f_d t1_iuaaw8w wrote

>Also glad none if them is close to us lol.

How would we know until it was almost on top of us?

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LaunchTransient t1_iubbhwh wrote

It would be visible, or rather, its effects would be.
It might not be as noticeable as, say, a comet in the night sky, but an approaching black hole would resemble a moving distortion in the background behind it due to gravitational lensing.

And the moment it moves through anything with signifcant mass (e.g. a gas cloud), it'd show up as that gas gets pulled into an accretion disk and starts emitting light when the gravitational shear forces superheat it.

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[deleted] t1_iubxtdw wrote

So sort of like the predator in Predator? You couldn't see him but you saw the moving distortion field around him.

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astro_osrs t1_iub7bif wrote

I think gravitational effects would be noticed, an incoming black hole with, let's just say 12x the mass of the sun, would definitely shift some orbits (marginally), but enough for us to detect them. Since we aren't detecting anything (except for like, planet x, which could be a black hole?) Safe to assume there isn't one "near" but honestly I could be completely wrong lol

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f_d t1_iubfdac wrote

By the time it was shifting planetary orbits, it would be on top of us compared to anything else in the galaxy. So if it was speeding toward us from an empty area of the sky, while not getting close enough to other stars to give away its presence easily, we might not realize it until very late.

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Wombat_Racer t1_iubx4ci wrote

What would we do anyway? Take photos I guess.

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f_d t1_iuekgbn wrote

We could throw all the garbage into it, solve the landfill problem.

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astro_osrs t1_iug987i wrote

It's hard to think that from a far enough distance, it would give us more than a few centuries notice atleast?

I feel like if there was, even a sun mass object, within the oort cloud, we would 1000000% know it. So if a 12x mass black hole was moving towards us, surely we'd be able to detect it. When I say shifting orbits, I'm saying very marginally, not enough of a difference, but enough to be detected to where we know something big is headed toward us.

Jupiter has a very noticeable effect on the sun, and the sun is like, 99.8% of the solar systems mass. Surely a 12x black hole would affect something enough for us to detect. Our planets/sun would surely feel it from very far away, and Im sure we would be able to detect the increasing shift due to the black hole heading towards us

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Aspy343 t1_iuarrls wrote

They call it a monster black hole at 12 solar masses?! The biggest one so far discovered is 66 billion solar masses so calling one with 12 is a bit weird. If anything it's not just small, it's tiny? The exact opposite of a monster. There are much more massive stars?

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Azelicus t1_iudi7fb wrote

It's just your ordinary clickbait terminology. Few people would click an article titled "very small black hole lies about 375 times farther than our closest neighbor".

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joosth3 OP t1_iuatwuu wrote

There are but it is pretty massive and close regardless. Biggest is a weird word for a black hole btw since they are infinitely small

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TheLorax66 t1_iubuk09 wrote

They're represented as a singularity, and for all all intents and purposes it's a good approximation because the event horizon is always larger than the radius, but they do have a diameter. They form when the opposing forces between adjacent electrons and protons is overcome by the gravitational force, but the subatomic particles didn't go anywhere, they're just stacked on top of each other rreeeaaallll tight

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carbonqubit t1_iucnpp3 wrote

This is the basis for electron degeneracy in neutron stars due to the Paul exclusion principle. Black holes on the other hand aren't composed of fermions, as the singularity is more like knotted space or a closed timelike curve. They can be defined as having three foundational characteristics: charge, spin, and mass.

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TheLorax66 t1_iud9vd2 wrote

You know, you're right, I do remember that being about stars now. Thanks for the little lesson, my astrophysics course never got quite that deep :)

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Aspy343 t1_iucwtyi wrote

"Black holes come in many sizes and their size depends on how much material is in them (their mass). Some are the remains of a giant star which collapsed. A star has to be much more massive than our Sun to become a black hole. These types of black holes are only a few miles across."

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superbario-64 t1_iu9shqf wrote

They say something like this pretty much every year.

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Foreign_Glass53 t1_iuam9tb wrote

maybe it'll get close enough, soon enough this time to suck all the humans into the black hole and Earth can start fresh

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PickleTickler37 t1_iu9uafq wrote

Is the grass ok? It just started growing back after last year's incident

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TheRealBlerb t1_iuaxg06 wrote

People here saying how were lucky there’s not one too close, but this little guy was here before we discovered it. For all we know Voyager II could have just been lost to a small black holes just a couple of minutes ago.

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joosth3 OP t1_iub2pto wrote

Planet 9 could be a low mass black hole

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PigSkinPoppa t1_iu9uyff wrote

How do they know that there is a black hole in the cross hairs of this photo? Please educate me and explain the photo. :)

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PorkStroganoff t1_iu9vpbo wrote

If a star move in a constant direction forming a circle and theres no other luminous object around so the conclusion is that a Black Hole is there

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Azelicus t1_iuditlf wrote

You don't detect black holes in a single photo.

You either detect them by studying the orbit of a close stellar companion (which seems to orbit a massive, non visibile object) or the effect of the distortion they produce on light passing close to them (an effect called "gravitational lensing").

For those reasons, we can't usually detect small, single black holes, even relatively close to us.

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Hydroquake_Vortex t1_iuc4owc wrote

Oh ASTRONOMICAL backyard. I definitely thought there was just a black hole chilling on my patio

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Less-Daikon6267 t1_iud3k8k wrote

I call it The Orange Menace Black Hole. Sucks in democracy.

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Gargamel-On-Roids t1_iudo8ei wrote

Is there some sort of law that states in every article or video about black holes, it has to be mentioned that “nothing, not even light, can escape”?

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