Well just as it seemed we couldn’t do much collectively, we’ve had a moment. Last week, thanks to the Event Horizon Telescope, a startling observation was announced.
The Event Horizon Telescope is notable achievement itself - a consortium of 80 telescopes around the world peer collectively at a remote object, acting as a single Earth-sized telescope. Then a consortium of over 300 scientists analyzes the data. It allows resolution of objects equivalent to spotting a ping pong ball on the moon. Pretty amazing and no small effort to be sure. I mean, go team.
Well 3 years ago it detected a black hole in galaxy Messier 87, which is not even in the top 200 closest galaxies to us. Following 2 years of analysis, a black hole referred to as Sagittarius A* (or Sgr A*), was detected in the center of our galaxy the Milky Way.
OK so Sgr A* is over a thousand times smaller than the one in Messier 87, but it’s our black hole, the closest black hole. What’s it doing out there? Only sucking in all types of gas and matter into its relatively small size, similar to “sucking an elephant through a straw.” In other words, that would be a really giant sucking sound if only there was sound in space. Thank goodness it is smaller than the one in Messier 87.
In his article from The Washington Post, Joel Achenbach clarifies “Earthlings should understand that it poses no threat to our world and is essentially just a part of the galactic furniture.” Whew. I feel better already.
Sgr A* is more massive than 4 million suns; it “bends space and time and forms a glowing ring of light with eternal darkness at its core (emphasis added).” And to think I was concerned about our pending collision with the Andromeda Galaxy. They better watch out! We’ve got a black hole bitch!
As long as it doesn’t get us first. You gotta watch not to stub your toe on the furniture.
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