ESO released a video which shows a beautiful visualization of zooming into the black hole and seeing the swirling pattern of the flares that surround it:
https://youtu.be/DRCD-zx5QFAThis is the first time that material has been observed so close to the event horizon of a black hole. The event horizon is a region around a black hole from which nothing can escape — not matter or even light. Because black holes are so dense, they have very strong gravity which pulls anything within the event horizon back towards the black hole and prevents it from escaping. Just outside of the event horizon is a point called the innermost stable orbit, which is the closest that matter can come to the black hole without being dragged into it, and this is where the flares observed by the ESO originated. The innermost stable orbit is part of the accretion disk, which is the disk of gasses and other matter that forms around a black hole but which is far enough away not to be pulled inside the event horizon. The forces of friction and gravity combine to compress these gases and raise their temperature, which is how the flares form.
As a supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A* is even stronger than most black holes due to its enormous size. We now have confirmation that this cosmological giant is the center around which the entire Milky Way galaxy rotates.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/sagittariusa-supermassive-black-hole/Linkback:
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