Massive Black Hole at centre of our Galaxy ...

[WhiteCrow]

Or if you read the tabloids ... we're doomed!

Seriously though this isn't anything to worry about - just that the mass at the centre of our galaxy which kind of keeps us spinning around with all the other star systems is just super-dense.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7774287.stm

There is a giant black hole at the centre of our galaxy, a study has confirmed.

German astronomers tracked the movement of 28 stars circling the centre of the Milky Way, using two telescopes in Chile.

The black hole is four million times heavier than our Sun, according to the paper in The Astrophysical Journal.

Black holes are objects whose gravity is so great that nothing - including light - can escape them.

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.

'The black pearl'

Dr Massey said: "Although we think of black holes as somehow threatening, in the sense that if you get too close to one you are in trouble, they may have had a role in helping galaxies to form - not just our own, but all galaxies.

"They had a role in bringing matter together and if you had a high enough density of matter then you have the conditions in which stars could form.

"Thus the first generation of stars and galaxies could have come into existence".

The researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany said the black hole was 27,000 light years, or 158 thousand, million, million miles from the Earth.

"Undoubtedly the most spectacular aspect of our 16-year study, is that it has delivered what is now considered to be the best empirical evidence that super-massive black holes do really exist," said Professor Reinhard Genzel, head of the research team.

"The stellar orbits in the galactic centre show that the central mass concentration of four million solar masses must be a black hole, beyond any reasonable doubt."

Observations were made using the 3.5m New Technology Telescope and the 8.2m Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. Both are operated by the European Southern Obsevatory (Eso).

[Paul Monk]

If we sent a crew to investigate it, do you think we'd find Maximilian Schell there with a load of robots.

[WhiteCrow]

I'm sure Muse are going to get a bit of extra play for their single "Super-Massive Black Hole" today!

[Rob McCow]

Hmm - this changes my view of the Universe. If all galaxies really are like this, then we're tiny specks of flotsam floating down the galactic plughole.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Hasn't this been in the news every few months for about 4 years?

[WhiteCrow]

Well generally it has been believed there might be a huge Black Hole or series of them at the centre of the galaxy. One reason for this is of course that we can account for some Galactic mass, and there seems to be a lot of it at the hub of the galaxy.

But at the same time we don't really see a super bright section in the galactic centre to explain the mass. That's what we'd expect to see if there was a load of stars there.

Basically in Astronomy what happens is someone puts forward an idea or theory, and over years we either gather evidence to support it, or evidence to rubbish it. Quite often both. And hence ideas evolve.

This news article represents more evidence to support the theory of a supermassive black hole.

Yeah - that put ya to sleep.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

But I distinctly remember seeing an animation of stars whizzing around an invisible mass in 2005 (or even earlier) which was reported as "conclusive proof" of a black hole at the time. Within the last year there was some more research which made the main news and was called "conclusive proof". Now we have even more "conclusive proof". I'm not saying that continuing research isn't valuable, I just wish that they would stop announcing it in the media every few months as if it's some amazing new idea that hasn't been heard of before. People seem to have very short memories.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Why is this in the computing forum anyway

[WhiteCrow]

Maybe this should be "even more proof for super-massive black hole".