Astronomers have discovered the closest known black hole near Earth

Astronomers have discovered the nearest known black hole to Earth, which is located only 1,600 light-years away. According to scientists, this black hole is ten times the mass of our sun. It's also three times closer than the previous best. It was discovered by tracking the movement of its companion star, which orbits the black hole at roughly the same distance that Earth orbits the sun.

According to Kareem El-Badry of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, the black hole was discovered using the European Space Agency's Gaia probe. El-Badry and his colleagues confirmed their findings with the International Gemini Observatory in Hawaii, which were published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The scientists are unsure how the system arose in the Milky Way. It is known as Gaia BH1 and is located in the constellation Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer.

(source : AP)