THE BLACK HOLE AT THE CENTER OF THE MILKY WAY
There is a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, and in 2003 scientists discovered that its mass larger than they thought it was, yet its size is far smaller than I ever imagined.
According to an article at the website of SPACE, the supermassive black hole is larger than anyone thought. Scientists had previously thought that the black hole contained about 2.6 million times the mass of the Sun. Now they think the black hole is between 3.2 million and 4 million solar masses.
New research shows that the mass, which is unimaginably vast, takes up incredibly little space: an area about 10 times smaller than Earth's orbit around the Sun.
And imagine all that mass, so densely compressed, spinning. It spins around about once every 11 minutes. That is incredibly fast, considering the rate at which other bodies spin. The Sun takes about a month to spin on its axis. Earth spins once every 24 hours.
Black holes trap any light that gets near them. So they can't be seen. But astronomers can measure the mass of a black hole through the speed at which stars orbit it.