Black holes are by far the most mysterious objects in the Universe, with some mind-boggling features that defy the laws of physics themselves. The gravitational force is so strong that not even light can escape it, time simply stops near the event horizon, and nobody knows for sure what happens to an object guzzled by a black hole.
Finding a black hole is like winning the lottery for some people. Not that such cosmic objects are rare in the Cosmos, but they are practically invisible if you try to find them with usual telescopes.
Newfound black hole is 30,000 light-years away from us
MAXI J0637-430 is the name of the black hole found accidentally by NASA. More precisely, the Osiris-Rex mission was busy studying the asteroid Bennu. But several months ago, it spotted an unexpected cosmic phenomenon when it detected an outburst.
The Regolith X-Ray Imaging Spectrometer instrument is mounted on NASA’s spacecraft, and it was built by researchers and students from MIT and Harvard. The instrument spotted a flare of X-rays coming from the black hole.
MIT graduate student Madeline Lambert, stated about the discovery:
Detecting this X-ray burst is a proud moment for the REXIS team. It means our instrument is performing as expected and to the level required of NASA science instruments,
Furthermore, NASA put it clear in a recent statement:
REXIS, on the other hand, detected the same activity millions of miles from Earth while orbiting Bennu, the first such outburst ever detected from interplanetary space,
You might think that black holes can only cause trouble, but then you would be very far from the truth. Such mysterious cosmic objects can help entire galaxies to fold around them, and thus forming their shape. For life to exist on Earth, it is mandatory that our solar system to not be near the core of the galaxy, where the higher density of stars exists. We’re more close to the edge of the galaxy, and the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A played a significant role in making this happen.
