It's true: the centre of our universe sucks From: From correspondents in Los Angeles November 04, 2005
Sucker ... not even light can escape a black hole's clutches. A MASSIVE object at the heart of the Milky Way is almost certainly a monster black hole, scientists believe.
New evidence appears to confirm the black hole thought to lurk at the centre of our galaxy is real. A black hole is a region where gravity is so strong that nothing can escape from it, not even light. By observing radio emissions, astronomers have also been able to measure the object more accurately than before.
The results indicate the "hole" is as wide as the Earth's orbit around the Sun, much smaller than previous estimates, but may hold the mass of four million Suns.
Astronomers believe the evidence points to the object, called Sagittarius A (Sgr A), being a black hole.
Scientists linked 10 US radio telescopes to capture the radio waves.
Advertisement: Black holes emit radiation from matter swirling round the edge of the event horizon - the "point of no return" after which there is no escape from their gravity. Writing in the scientific journal Nature, the astronomers, led by Shanghai Astronomical Observatory astronomer, Zhi-Qiang Shen, said that the new radio image was "strong evidence that Sgr A is a super-massive black hole".
In an accompanying article, University of Maryland astronomer Christopher Reynolds, said scientists were now a step closer to the goal of actually taking a snapshot of a black hole.
The ultimate proof that black holes exist would be to obtain an image of the "shadow" produced by the hole's event horizon.
"The predicted diameter of the event horizon's shadow for Sgr A is just 30 micro-arc seconds, or 120 millionth of a degree," he said.
