Blanet

A blanet is an exoplanet that directly orbits a black hole. A study published in The Astrophysical Journal found that millions of Jupiter-mass planets could form around supermassive black holes. Furthermore, this new research shed light on the further growth of such massive planets via gas accretion from the active galactic nucleus (AGN) disk of a galaxy and their potential to become stars. The stars could then undergo a supernova explosion and form stellar-mass black holes. Such a population of micro black holes could help explain the heavy weight black hole mergers observed by LIGO. Blanets are fundamentally similar to other planets; they have enough mass to be rounded by their own gravity, but are not massive enough to start thermonuclear fusion and become stars. In 2019, a team of astronomers and exoplanetologists showed that there is a safe zone around a supermassive black hole that could harbor thousands of blanets in orbit around it.