The second-closest supermassive black hole to Earth might be unveiled soon by astrophysicists

Two astrophysicists at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian claimed that there is a way to hunt what could be the second-closest supermassive black hole to earth. This black hole is reported to be flying under radars for years, which is hosted by dwarf galaxy Leo 1, at about 820,00 light-years distant from Earth. 

An independent group of astronomers proposed the supermassive black hole known as Leo 1*. Although it was not possible to directly image emission from the black hole, the team was able to observe stars moving at a faster rate as they approached the galaxy's center, which is evidence for a black hole. This black hole is also reported to be flying under the radar for years.

The second-closest supermassive black hole to Earth could be in Leo 1

Astrophysicists Fabio Pacucci and Avi Loeb working at Center for Astrophysics claimed a new way to confirm this supermassive black hole's existence. The way verifying them is stated in their study published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

"Black holes are very elusive objects, and sometimes they enjoy playing hide-and-seek with us," said Fabio Pacucci, the lead author of the Astrophysical Journal Letters. "Rays of light cannot escape their event horizons, but the environment around them can be extremely bright -- if enough material falls into their gravitational well. But if a black hole is not accreting mass, instead, it emits no light and becomes impossible to find with our telescopes."

"In our study, we suggested that a small amount of mass lost from stars wandering around the black hole could provide the accretion rate needed to observe it," Pacucci states. "Old stars become very big and red -- we call them red giant stars. Red giants typically have strong winds that carry a fraction of their mass to the environment. The space around Leo I* seems to contain enough of these ancient stars to make it observable."

"Observing Leo I* could be groundbreaking," said Avi Loeb, the co-author of this study. "It would be the second-closest supermassive black hole after the one at the center of our galaxy, with a very similar mass but hosted by a galaxy that is a thousand times less massive than the Milky Way. This fact challenges everything we know about how galaxies and their central supermassive black holes co-evolve. How did such an oversized baby end up being born from a slim parent?"