Black hole detected at the centre of the Milky Way

A team of astronomers have detected signs of an invisible black hole at the centre of the Milky Way using the Nobeyama Radio Telescope.

Reports say the invisible black hole is 100 thousand times the mass of the Sun around the centre of the Milky Way.

The team of astronomers assume that this possible “intermediate mass” black hole is a key to understanding the birth of the supermassive black holes located in the centres of galaxies.

The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains our Solar System. Its name “milky” is derived from its appearance as a dim glowing band arching across the night sky whose individual stars cannot be distinguished by the naked eye. The term “Milky Way” is a translation of the Latin via lactea, from the Greek (milky circle). From Earth, the Milky Way appears as a band because its disk-shaped structure is viewed from within.

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Galileo Galilei first resolved the band of light into individual stars with his telescope in 1610. Until the early 1920s, most astronomers thought that the Milky Way contained all the stars in the Universe.

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