Astronomers Discover Black Hole 'Waking Up'

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Above: In this handout from NASA/ESA, an artist's concept illustrates a quasar, or feeding black hole. Image copyright: Pool//Getty Images News via Getty Images

The Facts

  • Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) say they've observed the gradual illumination of a black hole that's 1M times larger than the sun and is located 300M lightyears away.

  • It was first discovered by an observatory in California, called the Zwicky Transient Facility, in 2019. It's located within the Virgo constellation and is in a distant galaxy that was previously ignored for decades.

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The Spin

Narrative A

Thanks to high-tech telescopes, scientists have been able to discover black holes, monitor their jets of electrons, and now observe their illumination of galaxies. As black holes have now been discovered in almost every galaxy, scientists will next be able to connect these mysterious phenomena to the creation of galaxies themselves. Not even light can escape these iconic cosmic enigmas.

Esahubble

Narrative B

When black hole discoveries are made, there are fears that one day, this cosmic phenomenon could cause the demise of planet Earth itself. There has indeed been a recent increase in observations of black holes "spotlighting" galaxies through their emission of radiation. However, scientific evidence suggests that black holes are not the outer space vacuum cleaners some claim they are — indeed, light may not be able to escape, but Earth is "unbelievably" safe.

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Metaculus Prediction