The Milky Way is centered around a black hole.

The Center Of The Milky Way?


The Milky Way is a hugely enormous galaxy made up of around 300 billion stars, one of which is our Sun. The solar system is made up of planets and asteroids that circle the Sun. Our galaxy is one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observable universe, each with its own distinct star systems, which include white dwarfs, red giants, pulsars, neutron stars, and a variety of other star types.

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We've all seen images of our galaxy, with individual stars glimmering in spiral arms that appear to spin out from the center, but what lies at the core of the vast galaxy we call home?

The Sun must be a really happy tiny star. Not that it's insignificant. More than a million Earths could fit within our Sun, yet in comparison to the massive masses found across the galaxy, our Sun is somewhere in the bottom half in terms of size. It is classified as a Type 'G,' also known as a yellow dwarf, which is around 15 times smaller and 60 times lighter than an ordinary Type 'O,' also known as a blue supergiant.

 

Go Big or Go Home

Stars generate heat and light through a process known as 'nuclear fusion,' which is also utilised in contemporary nuclear weapons. However, when stars grow large enough for their own gravity to kill them, a beautiful cosmic explosion known as a supernova occurs. This explosion has the potential to produce either neutron stars or black holes.

Neutron stars are the densest and tiniest stars in the cosmos, with around 2 solar masses compacted into a radius of about 11 kilometers. They are the leftovers of enormous stars that have condensed to inconceivable densities. A neutron star the size of a teaspoon would weigh nearly 1.5 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

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The leviathan of cosmic quandaries, the black hole, is formed by denser neutron stars and massive supernovas. A black hole is an extremely dense entity from which even light cannot escape its gravitational field. Until the 1960s, physicists questioned the existence of black holes. Even Einstein felt it contradicted all we knew about physics and astronomy. They eventually agreed that black holes eat up all incoming stuff and do, in fact, exist.

Even Bigger?

Alright. We've heaellar.' A black hole may alter the fabric of space-time itself, leading things to approach closer until they are drawn into the 'event horizon,' or point of no return. to comprehend the operation of black holes better.

Black holes are often fairly tiny in comparison to the stars we saw previously, but they have far more mass than these stars, which explains why their gravitational pull is so immense. This brings us to the appropriately termed supermassive black hole (one of my favorite things about astronomy is that extremely complex ideas have such simple names).

Two astrophysicists from the University of Cambridge proposed in 1971 that the Milky Way's core includes a black hole. An astronomical radio source has been identified near the galactic center, around 26,000 light years from our solar system. Sagittarius A is the name given to this area, which is around 40 million kilometers wide and relatively tiny in comparison to many other supermassive black holes. If it were at the center of the solar system, its surface would be barely inside Mercury's orbit.

We don't know what Sagittarius A is since it's too tiny and far enough for telescopes to detect anything other than radio emissions, but we're quite sure it's a supermassive black hole because of its tremendous mass: 4.1 million times the mass of our sun. It may possibly be a massive floating pizza slice, but it seems less plausible.

So, the Milky Way galaxy most certainly circles a huge, seething black hole that warps space-time itself and devours stars for breakfast. It's so far away that a whole galaxy spins around it. let's hope it remains that way!

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