From the BBC News website:
There is a giant black hole at the centre of our galaxy, a study has confirmed.
German astronomers tracked the movement of 28 stars circling the centre of the Milky Way, using the European Southern Observatory in Chile.
The black hole is four million times heavier than our Sun, according to the paper in The Astrophysical Journal.
You can read more on the BBC site (I cant find any other links about it yet)
Well to be precise, they tracked the motion of the stars and based on a model of the cosmos, were left with no other explanation than it being due to a black hole.
Which is not the same thing as ‘confirming’ one exists in the centre of the Milky Way.
Amazing really, if indeed this is true it would be great to see what research we can do on it since it’s in our own galaxy. 😯
I could be wrong here but there probably isn’t much news about it because I think this has been known by astronomers for a long time. It’s thought that there are probably large black holes at the center of most galaxies.
Very true – it is interesting as to why the BBC chose to “headline” it on Tuesday though, as it really doesn’t seem to add anything to the sum of human knowledge. Maybe it was a REALLY slow news day…
I didn’t read the article, can I assume they just refined exactly how massive it is and/or found further supporting evidence.
Sort of. This seems to be the crux of the news item: