Milky Way's black hole probed closer than ever before

gLing · 01-17-2008, 03:18 PM

Quote:

We are close to seeing the true blackness of a black hole. Astronomers have detected radio emission coming from within 30 million kilometres of the dark object, thought to be a colossal black hole, that lies at the centre of the galaxy.

Previously, astronomers could see no closer than 100 million kilometres from the object, called SgrA*. The new observation zooms within three times the radius of the hole's event horizon, the boundary beyond which any matter, light or radiation is inevitably sucked in.

The radio waves were picked up in April 2007 using three separate observatories in the US states of Hawaii, Arizona and California that were linked together to effectively form a vast telescope 4500 kilometres across. The technique, called very long baseline interferometry, reveals much finer detail than a single dish can.

The observatories were also tuned to a very short radio wavelength of just 1.3 millimetres, sharpening the resolution of the picture still further, partly because short-wave radio is better at slicing through the shroud of gas that lies between Earth and the galactic centre.

Milky Way's black hole probed closer than ever before - space - 17 January 2008 - New Scientist Space

Maybe those radio waves are a distress signal. "Help!! we are being sucked in!"

Mayo · 01-23-2008, 10:49 AM

That's awesome. It seems that every single galaxy has a black hole in the center of it.

Now the question is which came first, the black hole or the galaxy?

I'd like to think the black hole, but how?

01-23-2008, 10:49 AM	#2
Mayo Member Join Date: Jan 2008 Posts: 30 Tokenz: 220	Re: Milky Way's black hole probed closer than ever before That's awesome. It seems that every single galaxy has a black hole in the center of it. Now the question is which came first, the black hole or the galaxy? I'd like to think the black hole, but how?

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