Milky Way's monster black hole awoke 300 years ago

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iK9XNU...R30u7rijY-VdlsA

PARIS (AFP) — A black hole slumbering at the centre of our galaxy went into a "feeding frenzy" three centuries ago, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Tuesday.

Located around 26,000 light years from Earth, the black hole, known as Sagittarius A-star (Sgr A*), is a monster with a mass four million times that of the Sun.

Japanese astronomers, using ESA's XMM-Newton orbital telescope and US and Japanese X-ray satellites, discovered that clouds of gas brightened and faded in X-ray light when they passed near Sgr A*'s maw, ESA said in a press release.

The phenomenon is due to X-ray pulses that are believed to be residual bursts from a flare that happened 300 years ago.

"We have wondered why the Milky Way's black hole appears to be a slumbering giant," team leader Tatsuya Inui of Kyoto University said.

"But now we realise that the black hole was far more active in the past. Perhaps it's just resting after a major outburst."

One theory is that a few centuries ago, the powerful gravitational pull of the black hole engulfed clouds of gas from an exploding star called a supernova, ESA said.

The "temporary feeding frenzy" caused X-ray energy to leap from its mouth in a giant flare.


WE'RE ALMOST IN THE CORE...??

Nice post, Captain!

Considering that the galaxy is about 100,000 light years in diameter, 26,000 is not even close by any stretch.

Where did you get the idea that we're almost in the core? We are in an outer spiral and will stay there until we collide with the Andromeda galaxy in about 3 billion years.