Gaia's first black hole discovery: GAIA-BH1 (2022)

worldsayshi wrote: post #3

billpg wrote: post #2

Exactly how terrified should I be at this news? Really super terrified, right?

Not terrified at all. I see no reason to be.

Unless it starts moving closer...

Re: Gaia's first black hole discovery: GAIA-BH1 (2022)

#5

Post by simfoo » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 9:01 AM UTC

billpg wrote: post #2

Exactly how terrified should I be at this news? Really super terrified, right?

The closest one has 10 solar masses. Gravitationally there is zero difference between a black hole and a regular star except that the black hole has a way smaller radius. So for us it doesn't matter _at all_.

Re: Gaia's first black hole discovery: GAIA-BH1 (2022)

#6

Post by executesorder66 » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 9:02 AM UTC

billpg wrote: post #2

Exactly how terrified should I be at this news? Really super terrified, right?

If you should be terrified, you'd see it show up everywhere. At least as much news coverage as COVID got. If something happened that was likely to end the whole world, and it was detectable by many people, then you wouldn't only hear about it on one random internet forum.

This is pure clickbait.

Re: Gaia's first black hole discovery: GAIA-BH1 (2022)

#7

Post by shrewdcomputer » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 9:06 AM UTC

> The black hole is actually quite special. It is different from all other known black holes, and its existence is difficult to explain with standard binary evolution models.

Given this and the difficulty in spotting dormant black holes, it will be interesting to see if these black holes are suprisingly common. Similar to the way gravitational microlensing led astronomers to find far more low-mass planets than they expected.

Re: Gaia's first black hole discovery: GAIA-BH1 (2022)

#8

Post by eurekin » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 9:07 AM UTC

billpg wrote: post #2

Exactly how terrified should I be at this news? Really super terrified, right?

Well, if it had choosen our planet as a direct destination for (providing it has means to travel at light speed) collision, we'd only have 1560 years to escape.

There are a couple of comically improbable conditions that would happen only in fantasy to start threating us

Re: Gaia's first black hole discovery: GAIA-BH1 (2022)

#9

Post by zeusk » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 9:07 AM UTC

cuoco wrote: post #4

worldsayshi wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not terrified at all. I see no reason to be.

Unless it starts moving closer...

With it being 1560 light years away, we'll (parent, you, me etc) be long gone before it's a concern for Earth.

Re: Gaia's first black hole discovery: GAIA-BH1 (2022)

#10

Post by quickthrower2 » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 9:08 AM UTC

I wonder how the progress of science and physics and religion would have changed if we had a sun and black hole pair, but otherwise the same earth.