New image shows signs of supermassive black hole

Saturday, 3 November 2018

Astronomers have gained an image of the tell-tale signs of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy.

The new image was produced from data got by combining the infrared light measured by four telescopes in Chile, part of the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope.

ESO was able to to observe flares of infrared radiation coming from gases very close to the black hole's event horizon, the point of no return beyond which anything, including light, is sucked into the monster.

The black hole's huge gravitational pull forces the gases and other material close to the event horizon to rotate around it at astonishing speed.

**READ MORE:

* Scientists witness for the first time a planet's formation

* Construction begins on world's largest telescope in Chilean desert

* There's an 'Earth-like' planet - and it's just 39 light-years away

* Astronomers are trying to take the first picture of a black hole

* Black hole-orbiting star travels an astonishing 12m kmh

* Scientists caught black holes swallowing stars**

'New observations show clumps of gas swirling around at about 30 per cent of the speed of light on a circular orbit just outside its event horizon - the first time material has been observed orbiting close to the point of no return, and the most detailed observations yet of material orbiting this close to a black hole,' a statement from ESO said.

'The observed flares provide long-awaited confirmation that the object in the centre of our galaxy is, as has long been assumed, a supermassive black hole.'

Sagittarius A*, like other supermassive black holes, was probably formed during the earliest days of the universe. 

It was about 4 million times as hefty as the sun but only 18 times as large, and it sat on space-time like a bowling ball on a trampoline, warping everything around it.

Under these extreme conditions, the laws of physics are pushed to their limits: Gravity is twisted; light is torn apart; matter is made to vanish from existence.

As Sagittarius A* slurps up matter from the boiling buffet of gas, dust and bits of stars swirling around it, it flings huge amounts of material back into space: X-rays, radio waves, jets of ultrahot gas. 

Paradoxically, all this activity makes the black hole one of the brightest things in the Milky Way - and further obscures the darkness inside.

- Stuff with The Washington Post