6 thoughts on “Black Hole found in Milky Way”

1. 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.

2. 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. 😯

3. 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.

4. 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…

5. I didn’t read the article, can I assume they just refined exactly how massive it is and/or found further supporting evidence.

6. Sort of. This seems to be the crux of the news item:

   The researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany said the black hole was 27,000 light years, or 158 thousand, million, million miles from the Earth.

   “Undoubtedly the most spectacular aspect of our 16-year study, is that it has delivered what is now considered to be the best empirical evidence that super-massive black holes do really exist,” said Professor Reinhard Genzel, head of the research team.

   “The stellar orbits in the galactic centre show that the central mass concentration of four million solar masses must be a black hole, beyond any reasonable doubt.”

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