• Question: how close is the nearest black hole to the Earth

    Asked by anon-220323 on 19 Jun 2019.
    • Photo: Ross Hill

      Ross Hill answered on 19 Jun 2019:

      very very VERY far away….

      27,000 light years to be precise…. Which is hard to image, but it’s say far away that it takes light 27 thousand years to travel there….

      So don’t worry!

    • Photo: Matthew Bareford

      Matthew Bareford answered on 19 Jun 2019:

      Like David has said, it is VERY far away. But to put the scale of space into context… that is still at the centre of our galaxy..

    • Photo: Kaitlin Wade

      Kaitlin Wade answered on 19 Jun 2019:

      As Ross said, the nearest black hole is really REALLY far away. According to Universe Today though, it seems like the nearest black hole is 3,000 light years away. It’s known as V616 Mon and has between 9-13 times the mass of the Sun. The one that is in the middle of our own Milky Way galaxy is a ‘super massive black hole’, which is located about 27,000 light-years away.

    • Photo: Nina Rzechorzek

      Nina Rzechorzek answered on 20 Jun 2019:

      The closest black hole we know of is a stellar mass black hole called V616 Monocerotis, also known as V616 Mon. It’s located about 3,000 light years away, and has between 9-13 times the mass of the Sun. The one that was recently imaged is a supermassive black hole in the centre of Messier 87 (M87), an elliptical galaxy some 55 million light-years from Earth. This black hole is 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun. You can see the image here:
      https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/news/1566/black-hole-image-makes-history-nasa-telescopes-coordinated-observations/

    • Photo: Thiloka Ratnaike

      Thiloka Ratnaike answered on 20 Jun 2019:

      I have no knowledge on this subject apart from agreeing with the others on the fact that it is inconceivably far away!

    • Photo: Kate Timms

      Kate Timms answered on 20 Jun 2019:

      As the others have said, it’s really far away – 3,000 light years. But in the context of the universe, it’s actually quite close! In memory of Stephen Hawking, a signal was sent to this black hole but it will take 3,457 years to get there! Who knows what state humanity and the Earth will be in in 5475!?

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