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Black Hole At Center of Milky Way Confirmed

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i-can-see-it-from-here dept.

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."

42 of 392 comments (clear)

  1. I guess that... by AltGrendel · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...dark matter makes a black perl?

    --
    The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination

    - Douglas Adams

    1. Re:I guess that... by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 4, Funny

      I guess that the black hole formed a long time ago around some hot grits, way back when that was funny.

    2. Re:I guess that... by Centurix · · Score: 5, Funny

      I've seen Black Perl, it was ALL regular expressions. So many that there was a regular expression event horizon, with only preceding elements escaping and at the center was a nondeterministic finite automata. Quite a sight.

      --
      Task Mangler
    3. Re:I guess that... by Ikcor · · Score: 5, Funny

      Most Milky Ways have a creamy nougat center.

    4. Re:I guess that... by Thiez · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > Ya know all of this would be so easy if someone invented a chronoscope to view past time periods (reference Isaac Asimov's "The Dead Past"). Then instead of guessing what happened 10 billion years ago, we could just look and see with our own eyes.

      We have such a thing, but we call it a 'telescope' instead of a chronoscope. Want to know what happened 10 billion years ago? Just look at something 10 billion lightyears away (or at least, something that was 10 billion lightyears away 10 billion years ago).

    5. Re:I guess that... by StikyPad · · Score: 5, Interesting

      When viewed from Europe and Australia, the Milky Way has only nougat at the center. When viewed from the US, it has nougat and caramel. Discuss.

      --
      https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
    6. Re:I guess that... by Kingrames · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I don't doubt that someday we will find a way to travel at faster than light speed, and when we do, we'll be able to travel out to space, faster than light, then take a 90 degree turn, travel a bit longer, and point some telescopes at earth. (or in the direction of where it was). Then we will have at our disposal, a complete chronology of all human history under the sun.

      Those that do this, I'd call them Light-Scholars. Because it sounds cool.

      And it would be awesome to be there, when they do this.

      --
      If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
  2. Let me be the first to say by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Boy, that sucks.

    1. Re:Let me be the first to say by CRCulver · · Score: 5, Funny

      I agree. This is conclusive proof that the human race is circling the drain.

    2. Re:Let me be the first to say by schon · · Score: 4, Funny

      The black hole is four million times heavier than our Sun

      Don't worry, I hear black is a very slimming colour. :)

  3. We're living in an accretion disk by John+Hasler · · Score: 5, Interesting

    n/t

    --
    Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
    1. Re:We're living in an accretion disk by nevillethedevil · · Score: 4, Funny

      You're right...time to hit the gin.

      --
      Be gone from my sight or prepare to feel my flaming wraith!
  4. About time! by Jugalator · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Seriously (surely no one missed the bad relativity joke in that title :-p) though, are black holes really still considered theoretical constructs? For example, Wikipedia starts with "A black hole is a theoretical region of space in which the gravitational field is so powerful that ...". And for Wikipedia haters, this is repeated in literature too.

    Meanwhile, in this article -- "the best empirical evidence that super-massive black holes do exist". And besides, I thought many scientific articles bring up black holes now and then without questioning, anyway.

    --
    Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
    1. Re:About time! by jonnythan · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yes, they are. We still have no proof of their actual existence.

    2. Re:About time! by pionzypher · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I was more surprised that no one jumped on the statement: "four million times heavier than our sun".

      --
      I'll believe in corporations having personhood when Texas executes one... - advocate_one
    3. Re:About time! by danbert8 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You mean how it should read "four million times as massive"? Because you know, everything weighs more near a black hole... Even light.

      --
      Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
    4. Re:About time! by zaxus · · Score: 5, Funny

      >"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...
    5. Re:About time! by Andr+T. · · Score: 4, Funny

      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.

    6. Re:About time! by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 5, Funny

      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!
    7. Re:About time! by glaswegian · · Score: 5, Insightful

      are black holes really still considered theoretical constructs? ... I thought many scientific articles bring up black holes now and then without questioning, anyway.

      Black holes do have a solid foundation in theory, and we can observe the gravitational effects they have on their neighbours. However, as far as I know, Hawking radiation is the only way to detect them directly and I don't think that this has been observed.

      The authors of this article are showing observational evidence for a supermassive (millions of solar masses) black hole in the centre of our Galaxy - something that was thought to be at the centre of many galaxies but was still in open question. The observations made during this study have shown that our Galaxy has one, using techniques that are not an option for galaxies further away, thus giving us the best evidence that supermassive black holes exist.

    8. Re:About time! by S.O.B. · · Score: 4, Funny

      If we had absolutely no proof, or means of testing it, it would be considered a 'hypothesis'.

      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.
    9. Re:About time! by Analogy+Man · · Score: 4, Funny

      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.
    10. Re:About time! by Xelios · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's the nature of an unobservable object. All you can do is infer its existence through its effects on other objects, in this case through the gravitational effects on stars. But then all you've *proven* is that something is causing those effects. The simplest explanation is a black hole, but it could be something else, and that's why black holes are still considered theoretical.

      Dark matter is in the same boat. Same with dark energy and strings. Physics seems to be moving toward explanations involving unobservable objects, whether that's right or not remains to be seen. Question is, can it ever be seen? See?

      --
      Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
    11. Re:About time! by Kagura · · Score: 5, Informative
      The concept of white holes is not new. As far as black holes are concerned, they are naturally dense and occupy very little space with no foray into a "much higher dimension" needed. From the event horizon article on wikipedia:

      For the mass of the Sun the event horizon is approximately 3 km, and for that of the Earth about 9 mm.

      That means the entire mass of the sun or the earth, if compressed down into a black hole, would have a radius of 3km or 9mm, respectively. The rest of your post is very silly and doesn't seem to be based on any facts or reputable research/researchers. :(

    12. Re:About time! by digitig · · Score: 4, Informative

      No. In scientific terminology religion would be an "interpretation", in the way that the Copenhagen Interpretation and the Many Worlds interpretation are interpretations of QM. It's non-falsifiable, but helps some people cope.

      --
      Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
    13. Re:About time! by frodo+from+middle+ea · · Score: 4, Funny

      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".
    14. Re:About time! by Chris+Burke · · Score: 4, Funny

      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
    15. Re:About time! by bsane · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Both of those guys plenty of observational and/or experimental evidence that supported what they claimed.

      The whole 'A new theory still being explored is that each galaxy has two black holes. One is intake and one is output.' has neither.

      It'd be interesting if it did, but some work in the backyard with a mid-sized telescope can poke some pretty serious holes in the idea.

    16. Re:About time! by JustinOpinion · · Score: 4, Informative

      That's the nature of an unobservable object.

      I wouldn't say a black hole is "unobservable". It emits no light, but has a measurable gravitational field. Conversely consider something like light, which has no mass but can be measured by its electromagnetic interaction (e.g. using a camera).

      Different subatomic particles interact in different ways. Four fundamental forces have been identified: electromagnetic, weak nuclear, strong nuclear, and gravitational. A particular particle may interact via 1 or more of these modes. Just because it is "invisible" with respect to a given force does not make it "unobservable": as long as it interacts via at least one force, it can be measured/observed using that force.

      All the examples you've given are of things that are observable: black holes and dark matter and dark energy are all observable via the gravitational effects they produce. Just because they are not observable via light doesn't make them unobservable. (Strictly black holes do emit low-levels of measurable radiation (Hawking radiation), and could also be detected in this way.) The "strings" of string theory (if they exist) should in principle be measurable by studying the interactions of particles via the four forces (whether or not we will ever achieve the energy scales required to do so is a separate question). For that matter it is difficult to "see" air, but it is easy to observe/measure it in other ways.

      You have falsely equated "interact strongly via the electromagnetic force" to "observable". It's a natural mistake for humans, since our visual sense is so well-developed. However just because it is invisible to our eyes does not make it an "unobservable object". A truly "unobservable object" would be one which doesn't interact via any force. Such an object isn't merely "unobservable", it is simply "nonexistent" by any physical definition (since it cannot interact with anything else in the universe).

    17. Re:About time! by sexybomber · · Score: 4, Funny

      For example the integral of [ e^nx * e^-mx dx] is 1/(m-n)[e^nx * e^-mx] when n=m this requires dividing by zero but if you spot the mathematical trick that m=n is a special case when you are integrating [0 dx] and so get x

      SAAAAAAAAAAVED BY ZEROOOOOOO

    18. Re:About time! by David+Gould · · Score: 4, Funny

      See Fig. 1

      --
      David Gould
      main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
  5. ESO link by glaswegian · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here is the press release from ESO

  6. It always bothered me... by cjfs · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... 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.

    1. Re:It always bothered me... by glaswegian · · Score: 4, Informative

      You're not going to be happy with the new generation of telescopes then. First of all there's the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). What could be bigger than that? Wait for it ... the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (OWL) of course!

  7. Re:OMG we are all going to die by cjfs · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ahhh arts students, the sort of people who fall for...

    At least they make good venti iced soy mochas ;-)

  8. So we've found life? by msauve · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...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
  9. Yes, that makes lots of sense. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 4, Funny
    galaxies form around giant black holes in the way that a pearl forms around grit

    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
    1. Re:Yes, that makes lots of sense. by snspdaarf · · Score: 5, Funny

      Analogies form in the mind of submitters and editors of slashdot the same way driftwood washes up in the beaches of South Carolina.

      Soaking wet, and surrounded by syringes and condoms?

      --
      Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
    2. Re:Yes, that makes lots of sense. by GMonkeyLouie · · Score: 5, Informative

      An analogy is a lot like a tangerine, in that you have to break through the tough outer rind of legitimacy before you get to the juicy center and realize that an analogy can never serve as real evidence in support of anything.

  10. Excuse me? Like a pearl? by SecurityGuy · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  11. Re:Cool, and some questions by SBacks · · Score: 4, Informative

    Are we on the same plane as the accretion disk?

    Yes.

    How close are we to the event horizon? How close is the sun to the event horizon?

    Far. 40-50 thousand light years.

    Is it possible to collect and examine the radiation from black hole by approaching it from the "top"?

    Yes, hypothetically. However, the black hole is not "feeding" at the moment, meaning there is not much radiation coming from it. If it were in full quasar mode, we would have identified it a long, long time ago.

  12. Re:OMG we are all going to die by GMonkeyLouie · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.