Closest Look Yet at Milky Way's Black Hole

Illustration shows accretion disk of matter (orange cloud) and jets of speeding particles (white swirls) that scientists think surround a black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Inset shows a computer simulation of matter swirling around the black hole, with red indicating brighter emission and bluer coloring representing dimmer light. Orange circle denotes comparative size of Sagittarius A* measured by new observations, which is smaller than previous measurements. Credit: MIT/NASA/CXC/Johns Hopkins/U. Illinois

From Space.com

If it looks like a black hole, and acts like a black hole, it's probably a black hole.

For a while now scientists have thought a dense, massive object lurking at the center of our galaxy is likely a giant black hole, but they haven't been able to prove it. New observations offering the closest view yet of the heart of the Milky Way present strong evidence for the black hole theory, and even hope of finally settling the question soon.

By linking a series of radio telescopes around the world, astronomers created a virtual telescope with the resolving power of a single dish the size of the distance between the various sites (about 2,800 miles, or 4,500 kilometers). This instrument grabbed an intimate image that probed nearly to the Milky Way's black hole's event horizon — the point beyond which nothing, including light, could ever escape.

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