The supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way is 'hungry' like never before

The giant black hole in the center of our Milky Way galaxy is swallowing matter at unprecedented speed.

Astronomers tracked Sagittarius A * , the giant black hole in the center of the Milky Way galaxy containing our Solar System, last year discovered that it appears to be devouring matter in the universe at a rapid rate. ever had, according to the Guardian.

'We have never seen anything like this in 24 years of studying this supermassive black hole,' said Andrea Ghez, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California-Los Angeles, author of the finding.

'This black hole was once a weak black one, not so formidable, like' dieting '. We don't know what makes him so 'greedy' , Professor Ghez said.

The team analyzed more than 13,000 observations of black holes from 133 nights collected by telescopes since 2003.

An illustration of the Milky Way in the sky of the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.(Photo: Reuters)

Matter and light cannot escape from the black hole, so the black hole itself cannot be observed. But it is possible to observe radiation emitted from gas and dust outside the 'event horizon' , that is, the edge is a certain distance away from the black hole, where light can still escape the black hole and reach Earth.

On May 13, the team discovered that the 'event horizon' area was twice brighter than the brightest observation ever. They also concluded that the brightness around the black hole this year has been unprecedented for 24 years.

'The big question is whether the black hole will enter a new phase . whether the amount of gas swallowed by the black hole has increased over time, or do we just happen to witness a sudden burst of material abundance. into the black hole , '' Mark Morris, a professor of astronomy at the University of California-Los Angeles, co-author of the study, told the Guardian.

• A number of hypotheses are given.First , the fact that the black hole 'devoured' the material may have been due to the proximity of a star called S0-2 , and a large amount of gas from this star could have been sucked into it.
• The second hypothesis is that a strange object named G2 , most likely a pair of stars, flew close, and the black hole sucked the outer layer of G2, causing the team to observe the skyrocketing brightness. on the edge of the black hole.
• There is also a third theory that some giant meteorites were swallowed by black holes.

This black hole is 26,000 light-years from Earth, and is not dangerous to the Earth. The research is published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.