An answer to why our galaxy’s black hole is a finicky eater
For years, scientists have observed that the black hole at the center of our galaxy has a surprisingly small appetite. While the black hole, named Sagittarius A* (pronounced Sagittarius A-star), is 4 million times as massive as the sun, it is unusually inactive for its size, devouring very little of the surrounding gas and other galactic material. Now a team including researchers from MIT and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst has analyzed what little activity exists around the black hole. By studying 3 million seconds of observations taken by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the team found that much of the nearby radiation comes from material that is ejected before reaching the black hole, with very little energy arising from the black hole itself. “The black hole doesn’t have a chance to do its meat-grinder thing and turn that matter into energy,” says Joey Neilsen, who contributed to the research...