Spark and Perl go looking
Is there a black hole near the Earth?
No. The nearest one we know of is about 1,600 light-years away.
Light from that far takes about 1,600 years to get here.
What is it doing out there?
Going round and round with a star like our Sun.
The star is fine. It has been circling it safely for a very long time.
Could one swallow a planet?
Only if their paths crossed.
A black hole does not suck. A star just as heavy would pull just as hard.
So if the Sun were a black hole, it would swallow the Earth.
It would not.
Because the Earth would still go round it, the same as now.
Yes. The same amount of stuff pulls the same way, however small it is squeezed.
And our Sun is far too small ever to become one.
Is there a really big black hole?
A giant one is right in the middle of our galaxy: Sagittarius A*.
Dust hides it from our eyes — and the black hole sends out no light, so all radio telescopes can photograph is the glow around it. Telescopes that can see through the dust watch the stars racing round it.
Not the black hole itself — remember, it sends out nothing.
But now you can point to the nearest one, Gaia BH1: it is where the circle is in the picture, in Ophiuchus.
Back to the story: The Milky Way
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