

Feb. 13, 2013 | 2:30 p.m.




ASTEROID: When and where to watch it online

Stephen Hawking, theoretical physicist and cosmologist, recalls seeing the film in an essay on black holes, saying the hole in the film provides “a passage from one universe to another.”  He goes on to say the wormholes of science fiction provide an interstellar space-travel short-cut, a workaround to the “Einstein speed limit.”

And this fascinating space phenomenon is relatively nearby, just  26,000 light-years away.  So, astronomers plan to study it closely, NASA says.

The space agency, whose Chandra X-Ray Observatory provided data, says not only is the black hole nearby and young,  at just 1,000 years old as seen from Earth, but it also was created in a very rare way.

PHOTOS: Awesome images from space

“It appears its parent star ended its life in a way that most others don’t,” said Laura Lopez in a news release. Lopez led the study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The supernova explosion that occurred when this star ran out of fuel was “peculiar,” NASA said.  Oddities included the way the star exploded — with “jets shooting away from the star’s poles” — making the supernova elongated and elliptical.

Also surprising was what the supernova failed to leave behind.

There was no neutron star. The collapse of some massive stars leaves this dense, spinning core.  But not this time.  Megan Watzke, press officer at NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory, told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday that, indeed, it’s that lack of evidence that points to the existence of a black hole.

“In this case … the lack of pulsations from the other possible explanation (a rapidly rotating dense star called a neutron star) add to the evidence that a black hole is there,” Watzke said.  “In other situations, however, astronomers can detect the black hole’s presence by its influence on the material around it.”

The possible black hole and the reason behind it remain something of a mystery.

As Lopez says in a blog post, these “exotic explosions can happen within our own galaxy, and further study … will give great insights into how these awesome events come about.”

The study and results of the Chandra observation on the possible black hole will appear in a paper in Sunday’s Astrophysical Journal.

[For the Record, 7:41 a.m. Feb. 14: An earlier version of this post failed to include the words “as seen from Earth” in describing the age of the supernova and possible black hole.  It’s an essential distinction.  The object is 26,000 light years away, and that means the light traveled that long to get here. However, astronomers keep track of ages of objects based on our vantage point on Earth.]

— Amy Hubbard


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161 Responses to ‘Young’ black hole is nearby, NASA says; doorway to a new universe?

  1. katlinn says:

    Thats so cool!

    • timo says:

      Light year is a unit of distance not time. Therefore the distance the light has traveled is a thousand years. Making it 1000 years old.

      • dokwonder says:

        Actually a light year tastes the same as a regular year but with half the calories.

      • sush says:

        Actually it depends on how you look at it… it’s 26k * speed of light * time in years

        So if you are traveling at the speed of light , it’d take you 26k years to reach there

        Or in terms of distance 3*10^8 * 26000* (365*24*3600) meters

        Another thing it says the hole is 26000 light years away, but 1000 years old… it’d take light 26000 years to get here … so how do you “see” such a thing

    • Josh bowman says:

      It’s 26k light years away. It would take approximately 1000 years for the light emitted from what we are currently observing to reach earth.

      It wouldn’t be 27k light years. Basically There is no way of telling how old it is by the information given only how old what we are observing is. Here is the math:

      Black hole is 26k light years away.

      Approximately 10 trillion kilometers per light year.

      That gives you 260 trillion kilometers.

      Light travels at approximately 3 million kilometers per second.

      So you Divide 260 trillion kilometers by 3 million kilometers per second you get 86,666,666.66 seconds which is 1,444,444.44 minutes or 24,074 hours which is 1003 years. Which is how old the light we are observing is.

  2. Edkipjr says:

    I assume that when you say the black hole is 1000 years old. You actually mean that it was observed and documented 1000 years ago. Please correct me if I'm mistaken; since the black hole is 26000 light years away and it was detected 1000 years ago, that would make it 27000 years old, not 1000.

    • CJA31497 says:

      According to Einstein, a given observer's events occur when they are observed. So, even though we can calculate that the light of this supernova took 26,000 years to reach us, the fact that it would have been observed 1000 years ago means that, in our reference frame, it happened 1000 years ago.

    • A.Hubbard, LA Times says:

      Hi, checking with my source so I can make sure I explain this RIGHT. i'll update the story as I found out and thank you for pointing out!

      • Wastrel says:

        It's an interesting paradox, but in our frame of reference, the supernova was 1,000 years ago, and the black hole is also that age — to us. This came up recently in a article about the star Betelgeuse, which is 300 hundred light years away and supposedly will soon be a nova or supernova. Some people were saying, 'It could have already blown up!" Not to us, it hasn't. One way of looking at the issue is to say an event cannot travel faster than light.

      • Sam A. says:

        I presume what was meant is that the supernova dates to ~1k years ago, putting the black hole at around 1k years.

      • Sam A. says:

        Nevermind, misread. :)

      • manny says:

        Even though black hole might be 27,000 years, what we see from Earth is the black hole when it was just 1000 years old. So what we see from Earth is a young black hole and the scientist are studying a young black hole.

      • Josh says:

        And in 26000 years, earthlings will be able to see what the black hole currently looks like today!

      • Dustin says:

        as I understand it, we can use powerful telescopes to observe light before it reaches earth. Think of it as shifting our frame of reference thousands of lightyears in any given direction. We can also observe light after it has left earth, which is how we have determined the approximate age of our universe.

      • Lee Bickle says:

        I believe it means that we are observing the object 1,000 years after it became a black hole. So, being 26,000 light years away, the black hole is actually 27,000 years old, but the observation is that of a 1,000 year old black hole

      • Matt says:

        The light we see is from something 1000yrs old, wow Edkipjr you know what he meant, more of a post for yourself to let everyone know you read a science book in high school.

      • Bobby says:

        Nobody was finding black holes 1000 years ago kids. The world was still flat 500 years ago…..

      • yesno says:

        try: 1000 years old (as observed from earth).

    • Paul says:

      What they are saying is that the black hole is 26,000 light years away. The image we see now is of a system 1000 years after the supernova burst. Adding it all up, the supernova blew 27,000 years ago, it took the light 26,000 years to get here, and the explosion reached here 1000 years ago, but we didn't have telescopes back then, so we are just noticing it now. Or if it was visible 1000 years ago, we don't have records of it (more likely). And we've been in a position to watch the expanding nebula for 1000 years, even though we didn't have telescopes then.

    • todd phillips says:

      great point! and by the time we get there it would be at least 500000 years old. and worm holes?!?! like for one molecule maybe worm holes are a red herring at this point in our existance

    • Freekarrtt says:

      If it's 1000 years old and 26,000 light years away it's be impossible to see it from Earth right now because the light wouldn't have reached us yet. So I'm fairly sure that it's 1000 years as we observe it but right now in it's own place in the galaxy it's 27,000 years old. Explaining that was way harder than I though it'd be, and I'm still not sure I did a good job of it.

    • @Janaaaa85 says:

      Yes. It is 27000 years old. But it still is the youngest of all.
      Here is a link that explains it: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/w49b/

    • Guest says:

      We are seeing the supernova as it looked when it was 1000 years old, and we need to let time pass to see it evolve beyond that. A similar supernova imaged when it is also 1000 years old, but is twice as far away, would still be called a "1000 year old supernova"; saying it was 54000 years old would be very confusing considering both the close and far supernova are pictured as they were when they were 1000 years old.

    • Bill says:

      Right now, at present, the Black Hole is 27000 years old yes, but we are only observing it as 1000 years old because the radiation it emitted when this age only just reached us (taking 26000 years).
      However It wasn't observed and documented 1000 years ago, we've only been able to observe black holes fairly recently.

    • anonymous says:

      Perhaps the idea is the light/evidence we're seeing now was emitted 1000 years after the possible black hole was created. While it may be true the black hole is now 27000 years old, we won't be seeing the state it exists in now for another 26000 years.

      Why not call it 1000 years old. That's the light we're seeing.

    • chinopla says:

      @Edkipjr "since the black hole is 26000 light years away and it was detected 1000 years ago, that would make it 27000 years old, not 1000"

      This is a assumption most people make and it is a mistake.The term "light years" is a reference to the distance and not its age. example: it takes 12 hrs to drive from point A to Point B doesnt mean point A is 12hrs old.

      Get it?

    • Brandon D says:

      A light year is a measurement of distance. It's just under 10 trillion kilometers. (6 trillion miles) So it might very well be new since we've had the technology to observe it for decades now.

    • jay says:

      wrong. it wasn't detected 1000 years ago. it was probably observed within the past few days. light takes time to travel. the supernova occured 1000 years ago, but wasnt able to be observed until now because of the distance it had to travel

    • OPUI says:

      A light year measures distance not time.

    • AstroDude says:

      Wrong math. It is 26,000 LY away, and astronomers estimate its age at 1,000 years. That doesn't make it 27,000 LY away.

    • rman says:

      Yes even at 26000years, it is very young, almost a baby by cosmic standards. Remember, light takes about that much time to travel from the center of the Milkyway to where we are. The galaxy itself makes one rotatin every 225million years.. or 4 rotations every billion years.. 26000years is nothing.. a blip in that scheme of things

    • Josh says:

      Well…first off, it wasn't discovered 1000 years ago, our science was nowhere near capable of detecting black holes in the year 1013…26000 light years is just the time on earth that would pass in relation to the person traveling to the black hole, IF they were going at light speed (which is impossible at the moment). Meanwhile, the person traveling at light speed would feel as if NO time had past at all because of how fast they were moving.

    • lakotahope says:

      Good point. Sorry it didn't strike me until I read your comment!!

    • Justintime says:

      It was a star up until 1000 years ago.

    • Mr E says:

      Actually the image that we are seeing now is estimated to be 1,000 years old. Unfortunately it has taken 26,000 years for us to see the image because of the speed of light. If it still exists today, being 27,000 years old, we will see what it looks like in 26,000 years unless technology changes and we get an app for that.

    • Carl says:

      a light year measures distance,not time like a calender year. what you are saying is like comparing 1 minute to 1 foot, doesnt make sense.

    • yes says:

      Probably observed and documented recently, the black hole itself is 27,000 years old, but we are only able to perceive it as it was when it was 1,000 years old, because we are operating on a 26,000 year delay. Just a guess.

    • Rick says:

      Light years is distance. Years is time. Easy to get the two confused. Scientists base the distance from us on "red shift." They base the age of the supernova on the state they observe it now. So aproximately 1000 years ago (in time) this star went supernova. This star is located aproximately 26000 light years (in distance) from us here on Earth.
      This is no different than saying a house 26 miles away blew up last week. It doesn't mean the house is 26 miles and one week old.

    • D.H. Strongheart says:

      No Edkipjr, it says "1000 years old AS SEEN FROM EARTH". This means that, in the image we're looking at (which is what happened 26K years ago) the black hole began forming 1,000 yrs ago. Because the light takes 26,000 yrs to reach the Earth, and because the black hole began forming 1k yrs before the current light hit the Earth, the black hole is actually 27,000 yrs old.

    • anonymus says:

      U confusing two different things, at this given moment the black hole is aged to 27,000 years at its place but wat we getting to see is when it was a only 1000yrs old cause its light will take that long to reach us, it may not be written but it is implied. The age of 1000yrs is take with reference surrounding structure its spin and what not. Thats why einstein was a genius to fathom this very concept. In simple words light years is the measure of distance and not time. Time is Relative

    • R.Krishnadas says:

      When one say the black hole is 1000 years old, it means the black hole was formed 1000 years ago.

      The black hole is 26000 light years away shows the distance of black hole from earth, which is equal to the distance traveled by light for 26000 years. Light travels at the rate of 3,00,000/- Kmtrs per second. So the distance reavelled by light in 26000 years comes to 300000*60*60*24*365*26000 KMtrs.

      Hope this clarifies your doubt.


    • Josh bowman says:



      Black hole is 26k light years away.

      Approximately 10 trillion kilometers per light year.

      That gives you 260 trillion kilometers.

      Light travels at approximately 3 million kilometers per second.


    • Prabhu says:


      This is something I never understood. If the blackhole is 26000 Light years away, what we are seeing now is 26000 years back event because the light we are seeing has taken that much time to reach us.
      How can the scientists say that it is just 1000 years old.

  3. CHUCKIE BABE says:

    the name of 2 pluto moons are hawkins and watzke and nasa. these astronomers make _some large boulders out of minute ant hills they call evidence. they make their suggestions_to sound like FACTS. NOT one of them are able to afford PROOF. THEY ARE DAYDREAMING.

    • abe says:

      I can only wish that you are feigning ignorance here. Out of curiosity, how much formal education have you had? Did it include even a rudimentary course in physics? Did you get a passing grade? What do you mean by 'proof'? What methods of 'proof' would you propose? Why do you make a final statement that fails the test of 'proof' by your own implied definition? If you can't rationally answer any of these questions, don't panic. Go get another beer and bag of chips and return to your WWF wrestling channel.

    • Dave says:

      How do two moons have three names?

    • @Fellstorm says:

      the hell are you talking about?

  4. wes seger says:


    • Astro says:

      The camera would be pressed apon by the immense gravity caused by the black hole and would essentially disintegrate as soon as it passed the event horizon
      sincerely, astronomy student

    • Guest says:

      Yeah at light speed which we cannot even get to even 2% of light speed but let's say we could, it would take 26,000 years to get there then an additional 26,000 years to retrieve the pics. It would just not be feasible Wes.

    • Max Millian says:

      Where's MAXIMILLIAN when you need him!?!

    • OPWannababe says:

      Let's say it DOES lead to another galaxy or universe. Now, think, do you have cell phone coverage in the far North Pole? No. So, would they get camera feed from millions upon millions of light years away?

  5. bigtom says:

    Does it make sense to say a 26,000 light year away black hole is only 1,000 years old? The article should of stated that we are able to study it from a young age, but the black hole itself is more like 27,000 years old, as the light has already traveled for 26.000 years before we were even made aware of it

    • Justin says:

      I think it means that it took 26,000 years for the light to travel, as in the distance it is from the earth in light years, i.e. 186,000, or 187,000 miles per second, whatever the distance in which light travels per second, multiplied by the amount of seconds there are in an Earth Year. Then, the light which is finally reaching us for 1,000 years from the time in which the explosion came about.

    • sql_yoda says:

      black holes don't emit light. the only thing they emit is x-ray radiation (Chandra) – but that's beside the point, because x-rays travel at about the same speed as light. nitpicking, i know

    • michael says:

      As we see it it is 1000 years old. And yes that light took 26k years to get here. We will not know what state it will be in at 27k years old for 26k years.

    • jeff says:

      The article should HAVE stated…

  6. Rob says:

    There goes the neighborhood!

  7. Thrawn says:

    How can it be 1,000 years old if it is 26,000 light years away? Do they mean 27,000 years old?

    • Pam says:

      light year is a measure of distance not time.

      • Gopi says:

        Thrawn is right.

        I agree that light year is measure of distance. 27,000 light years means the distance light can travel in 27,000 years. Which means the light of this object as what we see now is 27,000 years old (as it travels from that object to earth). Hence, its incorrect to say the object is just 1000 years old.

    • Amazon says:

      Light year is used for distance. Light year is nothing but the traveling distance of light in a year.

    • Jenni says:

      This is the typical way of writing about astronomical events. Assuming the object still exists, it is now ~27,000 years old, yes. But we can't see what it's doing now, or even know if it's still there. So since it doesn't make sense to talk about an object which may no longer even exist, we describe it's age as the age it was when we last got a look at it. So it took the signal from this black hole ~26,000 years to get to us (at lightspeed), but when that signal was sent 26,000 years ago, the black hole was about 1000 years old. It wouldn't make sense to talk about a 27,000-year-old black hole, when the only data we have on it is from when it was 1000 years old.

      Imagine talking about something from when you were a kid. You might say, "It happened when I was ten." That's not implying you're 10 now! Similarly, calling the black hole "1000-years-old" when it spit its light at us isn't saying it's 1000 now.

  8. funkyonion says:

    We are infinities within infinities. People think life started for them just this once….

    Forever is a long time.

  9. BEN says:

    1000 years old? 26,000 ly away… Let me get out my pencil and paper. I get 27,000 years old!

    • Ankur says:

      You are all missing the ATLEAST 27000 years old

    • michael says:

      Yes 1k years old as we see it. Not the time it took the light to get here. Just as we see objects in the early universe, they are not old. The light has just taken that long to get here.

    • Josh bowman says:


      Black hole is 26k light years away.

      Approximately 10 trillion kilometers per light year.

      That gives you 260 trillion kilometers.

      Light travels at approximately 3 million kilometers per second.


  10. Whys says:

    Right there! A black hole!
    Oh okay, now I see it.

  11. Nilson says:

    Don’t you think that letting us readers know which supernova remnant your article refers to would have been appropriate?

    All we were hinted about was that it is a 1,000-year old black hole within a equally old remmant. SN1054 in the Crab Nebula, perhaps?

  12. E. A. Bartholomew says:

    So what does a black hole have to do with wormholes, other than sharing the word "hole" in their name? You imply some kind of connection that I've never heard of. Can you explain that?

    • Devon says:

      There is no connection. The article just thinks more people will read this if they put "doorway to a new universe" in the title.

    • A.Hubbard, LA Times says:

      Hawking says it best (of course), in link above: This is an early example of the science fiction use of a black hole as a wormhole, a passage from one universe to another, or back to another location in the same universe. Such wormholes, if they existed, would provide short cuts for Interstellar space travel,

    • Markth says:

      Yes, basically, a black hole is a distortion in space-time, basically think of space-time as a giant rubber mat, and each planet and star pulls down on that mat creating well, or pits around itself, well, black holes are small but hugely heavy and so they distort the space-time mat (or fabric) so much, that it's like a giant nozzle sucking down every other thing that get's near it, into it's pit.

      A wormhole, would be if you were able to take the pit end of a wormhole and curve it over to some other point in the space-time mat, you could then – in theory at least – travel between those two points in space-time by the path of the wormhole itself.

  13. Paul Vondra says:

    Sounds like this could be the remains of a gamma ray burst in our own galaxy. (The jets plus the black hole.) Gamma ray bursts ("hypernovas," if you will) are to supernovas what the H-bomb is to the A-bomb. Any gamma ray burst in our galaxy would have had some effect on Earth, though the effect would have been far greater if one of the jets had been pointed at us, which doesn't seem to be the case here. GRB jets are collimated to within 1 or 2 degrees, so the chances of one going off in our galaxy AND being aimed at us are thankfully low.

  14. Guillermo Pussetto says:

    "A doorway to a new universe" isa flashy title with no scientific rigor. Not something that I expect from the LA Times.

  15. yash says:

    "The possible black hole and the reason behind it remain something of a mystery."

    At least, there is initial signal; the end of the living of the stars is the small black hole. I like to interpret that as follow. Overheating and over pressure of ordinary matter will change it turning into compressed atom structure matter like black hole.

  16. Justin M. says:

    It's 26,000 light years away, but 1,000 years old from our perspective here on Earth. Sure, that seems to mean it's actually 27,000 years old. But I think it's normal to talk about the characteristics of the black hole as they "appear" to us in our reference time frame, not the reference time frame of the black hole to which we have no access. From our point of view (reference frame), the black hole is 1,000 years old, and 26,000 light years away.

  17. MCHSG says:

    Is it possible to find an object at a distance of 26000 light years away of age 1000 with the help of transmitting light or reflecting light. I think i am crazy if i beleave this stuff. I think there is no limit for this kind of fraud communications to common public.

  18. MCHSG says:


  19. Doug says:

    But if it were 26000 light years away, at the moment we are SEEING IT it is 1000 years old. Correct in saying, currently, provided our time is not warped due to speed or gravity, it is 27000 years old. In reality, if you observe something 26000 light years away, you would theoretically be looking 26000 years in the past. But given the gravitational and time bending properties of black holes, there is no telling what could be happening at the center- Theories suggest that time would approach infinity as the object approaching were pulled into the center of the black hole. Suggesting that the parties accelerating towards the speed of light would have time drastically slowed, that they may actually nearly stop time itself in their reference.

  20. Personally, I think it's perfect clear (and typically expressed) that this black hole is "1,000 years old", and that the age is expressed as relative to the time we have discovered it. So I understood that the black hole is 26,000 light years distant, but the light that is hitting is as at a point where it's only a thousand years old.____Simple. :)

    • Aaron says:

      People are over thinking this way to far, ^ this would be correct. So the article is correct. I know its bad to think of these things linear but sometimes it is needed, as here obviously. The first notion of light or first images captured are form when that happened.

      Think of light in slow motion, when we turn on a light it is instant due to our distance from the object, now if it was slowed down incredible amounts, it would start dim then get brighter, as the light is traveling to your eye the first particles given off might take 3 days to reach your eye but they where still "created" at a set point. So to you they may be 3 days old but your viewing the initial "particles of creation" as they still exist in order. So like being next to a light everything still has a "creation order" but you see them all at once :p

  21. Weirdo says:

    I believe it is 27 light years, not 27,000 light years. You cant say 27,000 light years as something nearby. And a 1000 year old object cannot be seen if it is 27,000 light years away.

  22. Really says:

    Never A Straight Answer

    Stop funding these lying (brookings institute) people who are so worthless to our country that they have began making up dimensions too act like they've done something for thier pay.

    After all, they did in fact, grossly mismanage the worlds wealthiest nations space program to the point of ruin.

    How smart are they ? Tell me again and again and again…

    PCB's, Agent Orange, Asbestos, DDT, Ozone depleting chemicals… All from the "Educated Elite".

    If Scientists were so valuble, why can't you drink water from a river or stream where you live, sometime not even from your own fawcet ? You could before.

    • Rob can spell says:

      Don't act like some highly educated type condemning other people when you can't even spell. You will gain more credibility when you can either spell or find the spell check button. Idiot.

    • Kidicide. says:


      Worthless to our country eh? So your saying the Columbia disaster was ok, and the people who died were pieces of trash?

      Any governmnet grossly mismanagases our money, from America to Pakistan, its the Government.

      Last, we could easily drink water from our river or stream, we'd have to purify it first. But if we did that we'd kill the organisms that live there, you fu.cking idiot…

      As the previous comment stated, don't act like some highly-educated citizen when you cant even wipe your own posterior. Your probably some butt-hurt 12 year old who watched a documentary, and decided he knows everything.

      Now be a good little fella and go make me a sandwich.

  23. Randal Mathews says:

    Science fiction by speculation?

  24. Jack says:

    Blackholes are not holes at all. They are super dense balls of matter that tend to be around the size of a ball point pen ball to golf ball in size, but holding all the matter collapsed from a star, planet, or galaxy. Wormholes are more or less sci fi at this point and considered to be a bridge or tunnel through space.

  25. Satiated says:

    Just because something is 26k light years away doesn’t mean it can’t be 1k old. If you looked at the star in 1013 that’s when we would have seen it die. Granted it died 26k years before we saw it. Same if u saw a 1 year old through a telescope who lives 26k light years away – they were 1 and you see them as a one year old – you are just watching them be 1 26k years after they were 1

  26. jim says:

    ok, i think i have it. the supernova created a black hole and a worm hole, and we're seeing it through the worm hole, soooo,,, the light is only a thousand years old and is twenty six thousand light years away. this is easy.

  27. MattH says:

    It does not make sense that the black hole is 26,000 light years away and only 1,000 years old. If it were really that age, the light would not reach us for another 25,000 years. I like how the article states "(think like a scientist here)", right after providing this misinformation.

  28. david winn says:

    was just outside havin' coffee and star gazin'. came back in and saw this. wow! such a wonder, this art
    museum in the sky.

  29. tqatallah says:

    It is so obvious that blackholes are pinholes to the realm of God and his reality. Science has proved blackhole’s oddness be we still dont believe its spiritual nature. We want to believe what our egos wants, and so far our egos proved destructive. Our spiritual energy will all go through those pinholes and back to where we came from, carrying back our life experiences. I dont have a scientific proof but this is whats written in the divine message which i believe in, the holy Qur’an. My proof is a spiritual satisfaction, and a few other scientifically proven verses describing other aspects of nature. Peace and out

  30. Dr. Bryan Ramirez says:

    Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought light-year is a measure of distance and not of age, so I can't understand why some people say that it should be 27,000 years old. And since black holes do not emit light, how could they have correlated its age from light-year? I think they used a different method in determining the age of the black hole. I'm having a headache right now so forgive me if I'm wrong. Anyway, the implications of this discovery is amazing! I really wish that we will be able to master interstellar and probably inter-dimensional flight in the near future before it's too late.

    • kfxt says:

      Dr. Ramirez:

      I think your response is correct in a sense, but I have always agreed with Kant that space and time are forms of intuition, not qualities of things. There is no referent for the concepts "space" or "time". In Kant's view, we as beings MUST view the world in a certain way. To give a rather ghoulish example, I doubt very much that a cockroach has the same point of view that we have.

      We constantly fool ourselves with language. Is the universe bounded, or not? If bounded, then what lies outside the boundary? If not bounded, we are in the realm of the infinite, which makes no sense because we are not naming anything. And, of course, there is Einstein.

      Certain ideas must just be discarded as nonsense, because they simply fail to refer.

  31. Diane says:

    I'm impressed with the article but more impressed that the author is responding to the posts! Good Job!

  32. DanM says:

    There is a reason that the idea of black holes being associated with other universes or wormholes is drawn from fiction: it has no basis in actual science. There is no scientific reason to believe such stories.

  33. Zac says:

    Cool my space ship should be ready in 26k -ish years,until then the views from my electron microscope will do. Maybe I will find a black hole in an organism and try and put my pipet through it and see if it dissapears.

  34. Gerald Nordley says:

    On Pluto's unnamed moons, I've written in Aeacus and Minos, two of the the mythological judges of Hades and integral parts of the Hades mythological system, not interlopers.

    A spinning black hole has a "flat" metric at its poles, so something can go through it there without being crushed into a mathematical point. If, where and when that something comes out is a matter of mathematical conjectures, but another place in our universe appears to be a possible solution. Practical space travel enthusiasts may be disappointed, however. Using a wormhole does nothing to change the Lorentz invariant structure of the larger cosmos in which such a wormhole is embedded, and any travel faster than light in that context would still be time travel with all of its grandfather-killing causality problems.

  35. Can I sneak into the parallel universe and get the me without a cold and bring them back :)

  36. David says:

    This article is about an interesting phenomenon but the article itself is trash. Putting "Doorway To A New Universe" in the headline was bad enough but it's so poorly written it seems to imply Stephen Hawking was telling us wormholes exist at the center of black holes and are passageways to another universe. Did I mention trash? Both author and editor should be embarrassed.

  37. Jason says:

    if you think real hard. it took 26,000 years for us to see the image of a 1000 year old black hole…. so it will be 26,000 more years to see what it looks like now.

  38. tONY B says:

    I woke up this morning with a black Hole in my underwear. I looked to my left, and a black hole was SLEEPING next to me. I got into my Black Hole,and drove it to another bLACK hOLE TO WORK FOR THE MAN..

  39. @chuckdude says:

    Hey, cubby, why the chop piece? You start out with a back-handed comment that this news is some sort of geek's wet dream, and then make a reference to some Disney movie without understanding the meaning of what Hawking implied. Nice work! And you wonder why people in this country don't take science seriously.

  40. kafantaris2 says:

    If the indications of the formation of a black hole took 27,000 light years to reach us, then the current events in that black hole will take another 27,000 light years to get here. Adding these two together makes the black hole at least 54,000 years old.

  41. ae em says:

    I thought headlines meant: racial stigmata and limited upward mobility within black youth – my bad

  42. Ted says:

    Ms. Hubbard: May I suggest that in the future you request a technical review of your articles from at least one subject matter … before going to press?

  43. guest says:

    It's beyond our current capabilities to send humans to our nearest planetary neighbor… can we stop the silly talk about using "wormholes" to travel to other universes. What is even meant by that idea? News Flash… "Star Trek" was an ignorant tv program featuring silly melodrama in a space setting. We don't have matter transporters, tractor beams, photon torpedoes, or swaggering ship captains.

    • sneakyfeat says:

      Actually, we do have swaggering ships captains and tractor beams along with ion pulse drive technologies. The rest will be along in due time.
      Science fiction eventually becomes science fact.

  44. Michael says:

    It sounds almost as if you're citing science fiction to imply science fact. Unless I have misunderstood? If you quoted Hawking himself saying that it is the black holes of "science fiction" which act as wormholes, then why would the title of the article imply that there is a "doorway to a new universe" nearby? It feels a little misleading, unless your intention was to amp up excitement about the theoretical possibilities of a black hole. (Which if that's the case, then you deserve credit for trying to get more people interested in science by making it sound more attractive)

  45. Black holes, the contemporary object of threat, found in calculations done by people who believe infinity had something to do with physical things. Infinity is a paradox. Back to the scratchboard boys.

  46. @abelinone says:

    The Milky Way is between 80,000 and 100,000 light years across. So 26,000 light years away is not in any way "nearby".

  47. michael says:

    It is one thousand years old, yes. We don’t say it is 27k years old. We can’t see that.

  48. Buzz_Dengue says:

    … "doorway"…???… uh, right, you go first.

  49. Kevin says:

    It may be 27,000 years Lon NOW, but the images we are seeing of it are from 26,000 years ago when it was only 1,000 years old.

  50. GalacticCannibal says:

    So where does GOD fit into all this black hole stuff. A curious mind wants to know.?

  51. Dave says:

    if it is 26000 light years away, the image we are seeing could be of it when it was 1000 years old.

  52. Didn't Stephen Hawkins change his mind about black holes being a gateway to other universes? I distinctly remember him paying off a wager to another scientists that a black hole is just that – a dead end.

    Did he change his mind again?

  53. Geek says:

    Yes, it currently would be 27000 years old, but what we see is the 1000 year old version. So they can study a 1000 year old black hole.

  54. Jorge says:

    The black hole is 1,000 years old from the light in which we are observing it. Yes, the black hole is actually 27,000 years old, but that's not what we are observing. We are observing a black hole that 1,000 years old, in it's "young" stage.

  55. @Fellstorm says:

    Scientists can't explain how this black hole formed (miracle power), and somehow it's 1000 years old despite being 26,000 lightyears away? Sounds like proof of a young universe to me. Checkmate, atheists.

  56. kfxt says:

    One universe after another? Are you kidding me?

    What sense does "universe" have? Is it bounded, or not? If bounded, we should be thinking about what lies outside the boundary. If not, then we are in the state of the undefinable. You are guilty of finding language that asserts nothing and defines nothing.

    The human mind, which was set up because of the need for languages and other abstractions, is not adequate for dealing with this kind of question. The noun cannot be blamed for the fact that it does not NAME anything. It is typical of a substantive that sometimes we cannot find the object that is purported to exist behind it.

    In short, the human mind, is, like it or not, capable of creating complete nonsense. If we can't utter a complete sentence, with grammar correct and naming those things that can be named, then we are out of business.

  57. Pruce says:

    My gut reaction is to say how can it only be 1000 years old when it's 27000 light years away?

    But then I considered, maybe they didn't detect it with visible light? I'm not sure if they can detect something sooner using radiation or some other method? I personally don't know, but would be interested to know more about the details…

  58. ultraman says:

    "1000 years old as seen from the earth" , as written, is correct. We are seeing what the black hole looked like 26,000 years ago, 1000 years after the black hole was formed.

  59. rranso says:

    What they mean by "young" is that while yes, in real time the black hole is 27,000 years old on Earth we only have visual means to study the black hole. The information being gathered now from telescopes is from the light being emitted that we are receiving from when the black hole was 1,000 years old. In another 26,000 years, the detection of black whole on Earth based on what we can see will be what the black hole actually looks like today. We have no way of knowing what the black hole is doing at this moment since the speed of light is finite.

  60. Bert says:

    I'm not an expert, but as a guess I would think that the object is receding away from us at a high rate of speed. That combined with the fact that space appears to be expanding might explain how it could be only 1000 years old and yet be 26,000 light years away from us. If it was approaching us that would probably be bad but it might save us the trouble of solving our environmental issues.

    • Guesty says:

      Not really correct. As the previous comments have said, we're just looking at an image of a young black hole that took 26,000 years to get to us. No relativistic effects are required to explain that.

  61. ABundy says:

    There goes the neighborhood!

  62. steve says:

    For Me, The real question is how do ya fill the dang things.

  63. JVN says:

    Better believe it.

  64. kfxt says:

    One universe after another? Are you kidding me?

  65. Stephen says:

    Worm holes are short cut moves from A to B within your universe, Black holes are tunnels to other Universes. )777(

  66. Cynthia says:

    this is the absolute worst newspaper article i have ever read……shame on you LA Times for posting it. I want the 5 minutes of my life back that it took me to read this crap.

  67. Amazon says:

    oh god! Light years are used to mention the distance. The traveling distance of light in a year is known as light year.

  68. To all those who are confused with the point "26000 light years away" and "1000 years old". Please be informed that "a light year" is not equal to "years as in age". The former being a unit of distance and the later being a unit of age :). I might be 100kms away from an object, yet 3 years old :P.

  69. R.Krishnadas says:

    When you say the black hole is 1000 years old it means it was formed 1000 years back with respect to observer on earth. Black hole is 26000 light years away shows the distance of black hole from observer.

    With respect to an observer near the black hole, black hole is 27000 year old. It is relative to the position of observer.

    To explain it more simply, let as assume we are viewing a star which is one light year away from earth. We are viewing the star based on the light reaching our eye from the star. The light reaching our eye has started their journey one year back from the star and as it takes one year to reach earth. What we are seeing is the event which had taken place one year before with respect to an observer near the star.

    Let us assume the star exploded at certain point of time. The observer on earth will continue to see the star for one more year after the explosion had taken place with respect to an observer near the star.


  70. SpaceFriday says:

    Reblogged this on SpaceFriday and commented:
    Reposting this LA Times blog post because of the conjecture about a potential new universe.

  71. Clement Nokes says:

    There are three known universes. Black holes can form in only one (ours). The image displayed in the article is of an earth-based aurora. This is not a stellar object.

  72. Shannon says:

    If I see a picture of a boy who is three years old that was taken 117 years ago… I cannot say, "Oh that man is 120 years old." Maybe he died at age 43, maybe not. All I can say is how old he is in the picture and how long ago that picture was taken. Therefore, we can say, "As we are currently observing it, the black hole is 1,000 years old and we know it to be 26,000 light years away." But we cannot assume that it is 27,000 years old and we are certainly not observing it at it's 27,000 year old state.

    • cbretana says:

      no, You cannot say anything using the word IS, You can say it WAS 1000 years old, Come on now, don't twist the language to make the aarticle correct. – you would NEVER say the boy IS 3 years old, now would you? You might say this picture was taken when he WAS 3 years old, or a thousand other variations, but you would be laughed at (as this article is) if you said he IS three years old. Even including the phrase "as seen from earth" it is not strictly correct, as even "as seen from earth", the black hole NOW (which is what is implied when you use the word IS, is 27,000 years old.

      Think about it. we can see stars that are 12-13 billion light years away. The correct way to describe this is "We are seeing these stars as they WERE 13 billion years ago. ", not "That star is only 1 billion years old as seen from earth." or, "Elvis is alive, as seen from Arcturus (34 light years away)".

  73. MILO says:


  74. Tim says:

    I agree with Shannon. Since it is 26000 light years away, it will take us 26k years to see it in it's current state. The way it is seen now is how it was 26k years ago, so it could have disappeared any time between then and now, but we can't see that now! So, the distance does have something to do with how old the black hole is because it is AT LEAST 1000 years old, and at most, 26k years old.

  75. JLEB says:

    If blackholes are doorways, then why do we not see evidence of the other side of the door in our universe?

  76. Tiggles says:

    That’s it, all of you back to school.

  77. Ellen Lewis says:

    I’m checking this out: is it right to assume that since this this object was (maybe is also) so relatively close to us (yes, LY is a distance measure), that cosmological redshift is not significant here? Differentiating cosm. redshift from ordinary redshift here, is it right that the former becomes significant for extragalactic measures?

  78. Morphix says:

    I suggest that those interested in a better explanation for this and many other astronomical phenomena visit thunderboltsproject.info.

  79. Robert says:

    i would say it is about 500 million years because earth travels around 30000 mph in our relative time
    so using that time reference for us 26000 light years should be about right

  80. Marty Kay Zee says:

    There is casual ignorance, which may be treated with education. Then there is willful ignorance, in which the subject just won't be bothered. And then there is belligerent ignorance, the practicing know-nothings who are much in evidence on these threads. We have religion to thank for them.

  81. phillip says:

    consider the idea that maybe a black hole bring matter together to create the core for a new planet so it may be born again

  82. cara says:


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