Scientists believe they have discovered the first wandering black hole, and the Hubble space telescope will confirm the findings this year.
Artistic rendering of a black hole in space. Image source: Vadimsadovski/Adobe
The idea that there is something out there slowly eating away at stars is scary enough. But, when you think about the fact that there are wandering black holes, well space gets a lot scarier. Of course, there isn’t much for us to worry about, as the black hole isn’t necessarily near us. Oftentimes, finding black holes is all about looking for the stars that orbit them. This is the case with many black holes, like the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. But scientists believe there are hundreds of millions of black holes drifting through space. So, it makes sense that at least one might be wandering through the cosmos.say that the object is between 1.6 and 7.1 solar masses.
Whatever it turns out to be, it is located 5,000 light-years away from the Earth. So, there’s little to no danger of it getting close to us anytime soon.