Black Hole Is a Closer Neighbor Than We Thought

Is anyone else thinking that things seem a little darker than they ought to? And did that giant sucking sound just get a little louder?

As reported by ScienceDaily, a team of astronomers has achieved the remarkable technical feat of calculating the most accurately measured distance of a black hole from Earth.

And it turns out to be closer than previously thought. In fact, it's actually about half as close to us compared to our earlier understanding of its distance.

Fortunately, we're not in any immediate danger of having to heave a "there goes the neighborhood" sigh, in anticipation of being imminently sucked into a space-time rip. The celestial body in question has been determined to be 7,800 light years away. But prior to the application of some novel measurement techniques, it had previously been understood to be about twice that distance from us.

Because nothing, not even light, can escape the gravitational pull of the black hole, they're tough customers to get a locational bead on. Typically, their location is pinpointed by the movement, and of the disruptions in movement, of nearby objects. Diffraction of electromagnetic waves by interstellar dust particles contributes to a very high error factor in our determining distance of these objects.

ScienceDaily reports that Peter Jonker and colleagues at the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research have employed a new technique that relies upon multiple readings from several extremely sensitive telescopes, taking into consideration the changing relative position of the Earth as it orbits the sun. Jonker and his team rely upon measurements of radio waves emitted by the former star to achieve their breakthrough in measuring the distance.

Image courtesy of NASA, via Wikimedia Commons