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.
... 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.
Ahhh arts students, the sort of people who fall for...
At least they make good venti iced soy mochas ;-)
>"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.
I swear to God, this one guy in a philosophy class I was in was telling some girl about the limits of science, and how there are just so many things we don't know for sure.... he goes:
"Take water for example" ::air quotes with his fingers and sarcastic voice:: "H Two Oh?" ::exasperated superiority:: "We don't know that!"
I spent an entire fifty minute lecture secretly pointing a laser pointer at his genitals, doing my part for the human race.
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".
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
You're right...time to hit the gin.
Be gone from my sight or prepare to feel my flaming wraith!
SAAAAAAAAAAVED BY ZEROOOOOOO
See Fig. 1
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}