Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way

Wimpy black hole spotted

Los Angeles Times
Posted January 7, 2003

Snapping the most detailed images of the center of the Milky Way, astronomers have captured their first glimpse of the day-to-day life of the monstrous black hole residing at our galaxy's core. They reveal a temperamental and somewhat wimpy beast that appears to be starving.

Black holes -- space and time twisters that personify the extremes of physics -- are among the most mysterious objects in the universe. Our neighborhood black hole is no exception. The new close-up view reveals a host of contradictions: The black hole is bigger than 3 million suns, yet so weak, one astronomer describes it as "a cowardly lion." And rather than slurping up massive gulps of gas and stars like normal black holes, this one appears to be on a starvation diet, subsisting only on dainty snacks of stellar wind.

"It's really quiet, uncomfortably quiet," said Mark Morris, a UCLA astronomer and co-leader of the team that announced the findings Monday at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle.

The discoveries are a prodigious leap in the study of a cosmic body that four years ago existed only in theory. Now, having proved that a black hole does exist at the center of the Milky Way, scientists are probing its most intimate details.

The daily behavior of the black hole is surprising astronomers who say the Milky Way's black hole, unlike any other found, sends out X-ray flares nearly every day.

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