galaxy facts | milky way facts
galaxy facts galaxy facts | milky way facts A Flashing Mystery Is Unfolding At The Center Of The Milky Way Something weird is going on at the center of the Milky Way , and astronomers are scrambling for answers. supermassive black hole, and ours is acting up. At the heart of our pinwheeling galaxy lies a black hole with some four million times the mass of the sun stuffed into an area roughly the size of Earth’s orbit. Known as Sagittarius A* (which is pronounced “ Sagittarius A star ”) or Sgr A* for short, it creates a tumultuous environment, whipping stars around at millions of miles per hour and shredding any asteroids that come close with the force of its gravity. The beast now appears to be acting even more aggressively than usual, flashing twice as brightly as astrophysicists have ever seen before. Researchers spotted the flareup this spring, and speculate that it’s coming from an as yet unidentified clump of matter unexpectedly falling onto the black hole...
