Slashdot Mirror
Black Hole At Center of Milky Way Confirmed
Smivs writes "The BBC are reporting that a German team has confirmed the existence of a Black Hole at the center of the Milky Way.
Astronomers tracked the movement of 28 stars circling the center of the Milky Way, using the 3.5m New Technology Telescope and the 8.2m Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. Both are operated by the European Southern Observatory (Eso).
The black hole is four million times heavier than our Sun, according to the paper in The Astrophysical Journal.
According to Dr Robert Massey, of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), the results suggest that galaxies form around giant black holes in the way that a pearl forms around grit."
...dark matter makes a black perl?
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Boy, that sucks.
Come on folks its time to have fun with the arts students again. We are all going to die because as we know a black hole sucks everything into it and these guys have only just discovered it which means it must be new so it can only be a matter of days/weeks/months a year at most before our solar system is devoured by this giant black hole.
Run for the hills, there is no escape.
Ahhh arts students, the sort of people who fall for the "di-hydrogen monoxide is potentially lethal but the government are letting it into our water supplies".
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
... that they have names (Antu, Kueyen, Melipal, Yepun) for the individual telescopes in the VLT, but could only come up with "very large telescope" for the whole array.
Please include at least a transformers reference in the next one. Thanks.
>"four million times heavier than our sun"
Can we please stop with the "yo mama" jokes? Please? :-)
/. zen: Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Beowulf clusters...
We'll have a proof as soon as the CERN guys turn on the LHC. Just wait!
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
Well... how can we prove black holes exist ?
(I mean... the astrophysics thing)
Good thing you put the 'astrophysics thing' on there. Otherwise we might have seen one of the few instances where a goatse link would be considered ontopic.
This guy's the limit!
...or the remants of it, anyway.
Someone at the center of our galaxy obviously beat us to getting their Large Hadron Collider working before we did.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Exactly. The pulsars emit gamma rays like the dung beetle emit pheromones. The planets circle their star like insects circle a dome light in the porch. Analogies form in the mind of submitters and editors of slashdot the same way driftwood washes up in the beaches of South Carolina.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You mean 'religion'. Oooops, did I say that out loud?
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
We'll have a proof as soon as the CERN guys turn on the LHC.
And if so we will have a remarkably short period of time to write a paper about it.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
So black holes are irritating to the Great Space Oyster which deposits stars, dust, and gas around it to prevent irritation?
There's my nomination for worst science analogy this year.
Due to the huge time distortion of such a massive black hole, PBS NOVA aired a show on the same subject 3 months ago http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blackhole/ Seems the German research got sucked back in time and used to show the orbits of the stars around the black hole.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
When i heard that there were black holes in other galaxies, i was fine with that, since they are so far away. But now i hear there is one in OUR galaxy? That's kinda scary, since its so close to us!
A 6 Digit /. ID trashing a 3 Digit ID. For goodness sake man where are your manners ?
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Pirate walks into a bar. Bartender nods hello, then does a doubletake.
"Hey friend," says the bartender, "you know you got a steering wheel attached to your crotch?"
"Aye," says the pirate, "it's drivin' me nuts."
Your brain is not a computer.
So God's in the black hole or what ?
"What does God, need with a spaceship?"
couldn't help it.
To get the full Shatnerism, you need some, more, commas ;-)
And if so we will have a remarkably short period of time to write a paper about it.
Academic paper writing... you're doing it wrong!
The way it works is that the paper is written in advance, with blank spots for the data and the graphs that can be plugged in, and then they do the experiments. With mocked-up data and graphs as backup. So don't worry, they should be able to have the paper out very quickly. :)
The enemies of Democracy are
I for one welcome the Great Space Oyster and await the judgment of its Great Fleshy Foot!
You're right...time to hit the gin.
Be gone from my sight or prepare to feel my flaming wraith!
All drains lead to the ocean!
SAAAAAAAAAAVED BY ZEROOOOOOO
We're talking about nonphotonic light, of course.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
I don't know what this "rest mass" hub-bub is all about. My photons never hold still when I put them on the scale. Jesus Christ the Holy Savior of Our People help me if I ever try to give them a bath, I'm usually lucky to get out of there alive.
See Fig. 1
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
They turned it on, but didn't do the universe-destroying stuff yet, only the destroying itself stuff.