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Something Just Passed Between Us and a Distant Star.


In December 2019, astronomers detected a one hour brightening of a star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a classic gravitational microlensing event. These occur when a compact object bends a distant the light of a distant star as it passes in front of it. The object responsible in this instance, named Phoebe, has a mass of roughly three times that of our Moon making it far too small to be a stellar black hole, but consistent with a primordial black hole formed moments after the Big Bang.

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Photo of Distant Star

Distant Star

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