Scientists finally confirm the Milky Way has a supermassive black hole

Image credit: ESO/Gravity Consortium/L. Calçad

Using the ESO’s sensitive GRAVITY instrument, researchers have confirmed that the enormous object at the heart of our galaxy is — as scientists have assumed for many years — a supermassive black hole.

Researchers used the European Southern Observatory’s sensitive GRAVITY instrument on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) to observe infrared radiation flares coming from the accretion disc around Sagittarius A* — the massive object at the center of our galaxy. Scientists think that most galaxies have a supermassive black hole at their center, but they’d never before had the data and observations to prove it.

To measure the effects of gravity near to a black hole, scientists needed to observe an object actually traveling close to it. They found their mark in a small star called S2 whose orbit takes it deep within Sagittarius A*’s gravity well every 16 years. As they watched, they saw three bright flares traveling around the black hole’s event horizon at about 30 percent of the speed of light — around 216 million miles per hour.

It’s exactly what Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicts would occur when a hot spot (like S2) passes close to a black hole weighing as much as 4 million suns, and the observation helps to confirm that it’s really there.

SAUCE: http://www.astronomy.com/news/2018/10/scientists-confirm-the-milky-way-has-a-supermassive-black-hole

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