Astronomers discover Milky Way’s biggest stellar black hole – 33 times size of sun

It’s stunning news, isn’t it? The Milky Way’s biggest stellar black hole. And, wouldn’t you know it, it was there the whole time, just 2,000 light years away. It’s called BH3 and I suppose that “BH” means ... black hole. Because it’s black; and a hole. Celestial bodies get named after numbers, letters, Greek gods, famous scientists, famous politicians, famous anythings, because there are quite a lot of them and they’re all up there. I bet there’s some comet named after Buddy Holly. BH. Bloody hell.

The Guardian newspaper has published a picture of BH3. Well, not so much a picture of it (how do you show a picture of a black hole?) but an artist’s impression. It’s what an artist thinks it looks like. Or might look like. I wonder: how would an artist know any better than anyone else what something 2,000 light years away looks like that they can’t just point a camera at and take a photograph of? Would it not make more sense to just get AI to make it up? At least AI would have a more comprehensive knowledge of what black holes looked like in the past, to be able to conjure up an image of this-here BH3. AI. Artist’s impression. Hmph. I suppose it is AI, after all.

Image: apologies to The Guardian.

If we (and, by “we”, I mean the amassed wisdom of cosmology from pole to pole of our ancient world) never knew that BH3 was there previously, then what is the benefit of having discovered it now, virtually next-door neighbour as it is? There are people who moved into a house two doors down from mine a year ago and I’ve never met them. They never moseyed up to my house to say, “Hello, we’re your new neighbours,” and I never turned up at theirs with home-baked muffins wrapped in gingham to welcome them to my very own Wisteria Lane. I have heard them occasionally operating what sounded like a sawmill at the back—all bloody day long—but, aside from that, our contact has been as close as that to BH3.

I think it’s disingenuous of the Iranians to be mad at Jordan for shooting down their Shaheds, having launched them across Jordan’s territory. It would be a bit like my new neighbour two doors down playing tennis with Gerda, who works at the chippie, two doors up, and getting mad at me for attempting an intercept as the ball whizzed over my bit of ground. Especially when it’s pretty obvious the Iranians didn’t really intend for any of them to do any harm anyway, given all the hullabaloo they were shouting about for days before the attack. If you ask me, Israel kicked Iran on the shin right and proper, and Iran, both mad and … hopping, retaliated by slapping Israel on the face with its glove. Take that, you cur!

I don’t think that that’ll be quits, though. Israel has a track record of rising early to wipe out its enemies as they sleep in their beds (7.30 am on a sunny September day was the attack on Egypt; by tea time, Moshe was already mopping up). If Israel had given Egypt half as much warning in 1967 as Iran gave Israel in 2024, I think Nasser might have got a few more of his MiGs in the air. But a pre-emptive strike will always catch someone with their pants down. Nobody had their pants down on Saturday. Iran barely scratched Israel: more a question of honour than anything else. And yet some in their war cabinet are baying for revenge. Revenge for the loss of ancient Judaea, revenge for al-Karamah, revenge for Black September, revenge for Yom Kippur, revenge for the oil embargo, revenge for Sadat, revenge for Begin, revenge for Beirut and revenge for Arafat, revenge for the intifada, revenge for the stone throwing, revenge for Oslo, revenge against Rabin, revenge for the street war; revenge for a slap in the face with a suede glove. What do I care about their revenge? What do I care about why they’re so het up about being bombed? When they come and bomb me and I can do something about it, then, I’ll care.

So, what do I care? I was once robbed, burgled, they took 400 euros and a camera. The police actually came when I called them—bloody hell!—and that was that. I think I got an insurance settlement. I bought an alarm that cost 2,500 euros and fitted window locks that cost another 2,000. I cared about the burglary, and it cost me 5,000 euros in security measures. My own little iron dome, David’s slingshot. Do I want the thief’s blood? I wouldn’t weep if he fell off a cliff. But, if the b*****d comes back, I’ll kick his head to a f*****g pulp.

And an officious police officer will clasp my wrists in handcuffs and lead me away for overreacting and being uncivilised and unworthy of living in genteel society. I’ll be branded “one of them”, the uncontrollable, vicious, rabid scum: wanting nothing but revenge.

So what is it that makes us care? The more we care, the less there is we can do about what we care. I don’t care a fig about BH3. And I really wonder if anyone else does either. Yes, science cares about it, because science is a career that depends on discovering wow things and drawing make-believe pictures to convince us of the significance of what they find out in outer space, but aside from meteorites hurtling towards Earth at a thousand kilometres a minute, what do we care what’s up there 2,000 light years away?

What we care about is our sense of justice. There is much that we can’t do anything about, not even our governments can do anything about them. But what governments and big business and our bosses and our fathers and the police can all do something about that we can’t, is justice. Not lawfulness, because laws are notoriously fickle. But what we know in our deepest insides is right and wrong. That is a place that is not two doors down from where you are, and it is certainly not 2,000 light years distant out in the sky. But it may as well be. It’s within 12 inches of where you’re reading this, the answer is. The answer to the question: what do I care?

Get full access to The Endless Chain at endlesschain.substack.com/subscribe