milky way center
:: a supermassive
black hole
Supermassive black holes -- the name given to black holes whose mass is more than 1,000,000
times the mass of the sun -- can be found at the center of many galaxies. Scientists from the
Weizmann Institute of Science, the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, and several
institutions in France have succeeded in tracking Sagittarius A*, a star racing around a dark
mass at the center of our galaxy. This achievement offers more support for the widely held view
that the dark mass is a supermassive black hole.
The scientists tracked, for the first time, a star completing an orbit around a known unusual
source of radiation (a black hole candidate) in the center of our galaxy. This discovery heralds
a new epoch of high precision black hole astronomy and that might help us better understand how
galaxies are born and evolve.
Such sightings could provide information on a point we know surprisingly little about: our own
place in the universe. Tal Alexander, a theoretical astrophysicist,said: 'We currently do not
even know the earth's exact distance from the center of our own galaxy -- understanding stellar
orbits of this kind might tell us where we are.' >from *Zooming
Star Points to Supermassive Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way*, october 16, 2002
related context
> life come from explosions
of stars. toward a standard model of supernovae. september 25, 2001
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