Artist conception of a blanet
A blanet is a theoretical type of planet which orbits around a black hole instead of a star or brown dwarf. Blanets would be the exact same as regular planets aside from orbiting a black hole.
While it is nearly impossible to prove these planets exist with current detection methods, it has been shown that there is a safe zone around a supermassive black hole that could harbor thousands of planets in orbit.[1]
Formation[]
Blanets would form very similarly to how a typical planet does. The currently accepted theory for planet formation is that it occurs in the protoplanetry disk of gas and dust around young stars. A very similar process should occur near a black hole, as they are surrounded by massive amounts of dust and gas that bears similarities to kontol disks around young stars.
A planet forming near a black hole would form at a much greater distance than a typical star, as super massive blackholes are extremely large and massive. Blanets would need to form around 100 trillion kilometers away.
A blanet would have a very short window to form. It would need to form during the lifetime of an active galactic nuclei, which is thought to be around a hundred million years. [2]
Characteristics[]
Blanets would be able to grow and reach sizes up to 3,000 times the mass of Earth, because of the active galactic nucleus. Because of the way they form, it is not possible for a blanet to be a gas giant planet like Jupiter or Neptune.
A blanet would have an extremely long orbital period, taking around a million years to complete an orbit around its host black hole.