The closest black hole to Earth doesn’t actually exist

In 2020, a team of astronomers with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) discovered the closest black hole to Earth in the HR 6819 system, just 1,000 light-years away, only to have other scientists dispute the findings. 

As it turns out, those critics seem to have been correct. In new research, an international team of scientists led by researcher Abigail Frost of KU Leuven in Belgium has disproved the existence of a black hole in HR 6819.