In 2020, astronomers identified a nearby star system that appeared to contain something phenomenal: the closest black hole to Earth! Now, new research from some of those same astronomers suggests that they may have been deceived by a cosmic illusion.
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00:00In 2020, astronomers turned their telescopes to a nearby star system and saw something
00:04incredible. Two stars locked in orbit around what appeared to be a black hole. Located just
00:11a thousand light-years from Earth, it would be the nearest black hole to our solar system ever
00:15discovered, about three times nearer than the next closest candidate. Because black holes are
00:20too dark to observe directly, the team's evidence was based on the behavior of the two stars they
00:24could see. One of the stars seemed to be circling an unseen object in a tight orbit of 40 days or so,
00:31while the second star appeared to orbit both the black hole and the first star from a much further
00:36distance. However, new research shows that it may have all been a cosmic optical illusion the whole
00:42time. In a new paper, astronomers looked at that star system again, this time using the European
00:47Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope. Yes, that is what it's really called. The scientists
00:53found that the system's two stars weren't far apart from each other after all, but actually orbited
00:58one another at about one-third of the distance between Earth and the Sun. It only appeared that
01:03they were spread apart because one star was significantly smaller than the other, and rotated
01:08much more slowly. According to the researchers, this is only possible if the larger star had literally
01:13stolen the atmosphere away from the smaller one in a rarely seen phenomenon called stellar vampirism.
01:19The vampire star ballooned in mass and began to spin faster while the so-called donor star shrunk and
01:26slowed. With these two stars orbiting so closely together, there is absolutely no room for a black
01:32hole in their solar system, the researcher said. That moves Earth's closest black hole back by a few
01:38thousand light years. But it also gives scientists a rare and eye-opening glimpse at the lives of vampire
01:44stars and their unfortunate companions.