Milky Way's Black Hole a Gamma Source?

eldavojohn writes "A paper recently accepted for publication (preprint here) proposes a sound explanation for the source of the gamma rays that permeate our galaxy. The Milky Way's central object Sagittarius A*, widely believed to be a supermassive black hole, is now suspected to be the source. To test this theory, two scientists created a computer model to track the protons, flung outward with energies up to 100 TeV by the intense magnetic fields near the event horizon, as they make a random walk through the plasma environment. It can take thousands of years for them to travel 10 light-years from the black hole, where they collide with lower-energy protons to form pions. These decay into gamma radiation emanating from a torus-shaped region around the central object."

Comments

Re:Do we know?

[MightyMartian]

I've been semi-interested in Cosmology/Astrophysics lately, and from everything I've seen and read so far, I've ascertained that we don't know much. Between dark matter, dark energy, gravity, black holes, big bang, etc. it seems like we just conveniently make up "stuff" to fit some model or equation. Do discoveries like this mean anything at this time considering there's no way to prove any of it?

Translation: I know the names of some scientific fields, but never read more than the science headlines in the newspaper. Clearly this is the fault of scientists.

Re:Do we know?

[ChrisA90278]

"Do discoveries like this mean anything at this time considering there's no way to prove any of it?"

There is no way in science to PROVE ANYTHING. All one can do is disprove a theory you can never prove a theory to be true. This is a very basic part of how science works

A theory is a good theory if it is predictive and makes good predictions and it is disprovable and it has not been disproved. But a theory can't be proven to be true.

Have you ever read Wittgenstein? Goggle the name. He wrote, long before the 1960's a question "Have I ever been to the moon?" He argued that while he thought he'd never been there and knew of no one who had he could not prove he's never been to the moon and further that such proof was impossible. Proof is very different from being very, very certain. He goes on to explain the difference and what can and can not be proven. Some things can never be proven not matter what you do

In science all you can be is "very certain" but must always be open to being proven wrong. For example we think and are very certain that light follows the inverse square law but can you prove that it ALWAYS does? It only takes one exception to disprove the theory but a trillion observations would not prove it true.