Turns out we have a black hole much closer to our neighborhood than anyone had suspected.

An international team of astronomers has accurately measured the distance from Earth to a black hole for the first time. Without needing to rely on mathematical models the astronomers came up with a distance of 7800 light years, much closer than had been assumed until now.

[T]he astronomers could establish that the black hole of V404 Cygni is 7800 light years from Earth, slightly more than half the distance that was previously assumed.

Fellow researcher James Miller-Jones adds: “We are now trying to apply the same measurement method to several other black holes.”

Just short of eight thousand light years isn’t all that bad. Though in cosmic terms, it really is the neighborhood. Guess we’ll find out soon enough how many of these we have floating around in the back yard.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 8:02 pm and is filed under Newsburger. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.