What's inside a black hole?
Thanks to German astronomers, we now have the most accurate measurements yet of the giant black hole that sits at the centre of our galaxy. And what a beast it is: as wide as Earth's orbit around the sun and 4.3 million times more massive than our home star. Lucky, then, that it is 27,000 light years away.Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics used two telescopes operated by the European Southern Observatory in Chile to watch stars as they circled the centre of the Milky Way. The 16-year study, now published in the Astrophysical Journal, has proved beyond doubt that lurking at the very centre of the galaxy is a black hole.Black holes are clearly intriguing, and not just to scientists. Earlier today, a colleague known more for his in-depth investigations into the wrongdoings of governments and multinationals than his knowledge of quantum gravity, asked what seems...
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