Black hole closest to Earth is now a 'vampire'

HR 6819 aka Be Star, long thought to be the closest black hole to Earth, is something entirely different, interesting and terrifying.

Beige is 1,120 light-years from Earth, discovered in the 1980s, so it was initially mistaken for a star, leading to an "irrelevant" sounding name. Later studies showed that it could not be a star but a matter devourer, likely a small black hole called.

The closest black hole to Earth is actually a vampire star and its victims

But the latest research results from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) show that the mass of Sao Be appears to be much smaller than the mass needed to form a black hole. It also has a smaller and lighter companion, which causes the main object to vibrate frequently.

Two other scenarios are posed for the so-called Sao Be. First, it's a three-body system consisting of an invisible black hole, a star with a dim, heterogeneous luminosity, and a bright main star, which is exactly what we see. Second, it could be two interacting objects. If falling into the second scenario, the two objects must be very close to each other, hardly a black hole!

According to Science Alert, an examination by ESO's Very Large Telescope with a special light comparator indicates that it must be a binary star, but not an ordinary binary star.

They are entering a phase where one of the objects has turned into a vampire, having nearly drained the companion star's atmosphere. A star can turn into a vampire when it has run out of energy and transforms into the cosmic "zombie" form - a white dwarf.

In other words, Sao Be is really what it was a few decades ago, and is a vampire star who lives next to its close victims.