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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."

19 of 392 comments (clear)

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

    n/t

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    Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
  3. 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 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.

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      Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
    2. 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? :-)

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      /. zen: Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Beowulf clusters...
    3. 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.

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      This guy's the limit!
    4. 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.

    5. 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. :(

    6. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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 ;-)

  6. 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
  7. 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.

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    Task Mangler
  8. 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?

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    Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
  9. Re:I guess that... by Ikcor · · Score: 5, Funny

    Most Milky Ways have a creamy nougat center.

  10. 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.

  11. 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.

  12. 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.

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