A Scout Probe Will Uncover the Mystery of the Nearest Black Hole ⚡ экспресс
Original: "Testing Black Holes with Interstellar Missions: I. Orbiting Probes"
Scientists have calculated a mission that will definitively figure out what we're dealing with: a black hole or a neutron star.
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The nearest black hole might not be a black hole. To find out, scientists are calculating a mission for a probe that, a century from now, will orbit the mysterious object. If it has a surface, it's a neutron star. If not, we're looking at a true maw of spacetime.
🎯 The nearest black hole, Gaia BH1, is 1,560 light-years away. To reach it in a century, a probe would need to travel at about 5% of the speed of light — a hundred times faster than any current spacecraft.
🎬 As in 'Interstellar', orbiting a black hole becomes the key to understanding gravity.