If it were a black hole, which would necessarily mean a primordial black hole, we would never spot it. We would look, and look, and eventually give up and say it must be a statistical fluke. A coal-black body would also be hard to spot. Surprisingly many asteroids are black, for poorly-understood reasons.
We might not spot it from earth, but if we’re confident enough of where we’ll find it, its orbital parameters, its mass, a probe could be sent, and it could be detected through its SOI, and perhaps even direct observation.
Sure, ~300AU is a long way, but we have the technology, and it’s our closest black hole candidate by many orders of magnitude
If it is a choice between, (1) Spend $500M just to see whether there really is a black hole there, or (2) it is probably a just statistical fluke -- it is not hard to guess which will be chosen.
Comments
If it were a black hole, which would necessarily mean a primordial black hole, we would never spot it. We would look, and look, and eventually give up and say it must be a statistical fluke. A coal-black body would also be hard to spot. Surprisingly many asteroids are black, for poorly-understood reasons.
We might not spot it from earth, but if we’re confident enough of where we’ll find it, its orbital parameters, its mass, a probe could be sent, and it could be detected through its SOI, and perhaps even direct observation.
Sure, ~300AU is a long way, but we have the technology, and it’s our closest black hole candidate by many orders of magnitude
If it is a choice between, (1) Spend $500M just to see whether there really is a black hole there, or (2) it is probably a just statistical fluke -- it is not hard to guess which will be chosen.