The closest black hole to Earth is no more — in fact, it never existed

In 2020, astronomers identified a nearby star system that appeared to contain something phenomenal: the closest black hole to Earth, sitting a mere 1,000 light-years away (that's less than 1% of the width of the Milky Way). Now, new research from some of those same astronomers suggests that they may have been deceived by a cosmic illusion.
In a new study published March 2 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, researchers took another look at that star system — named HR 6819 — with the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope. What appeared in 2020 to be a system of three massive objects — a large star orbiting a black hole every 40 days, with a second star orbiting much farther away — actually contains no black hole at all, the researchers wrote.