200 years ago, the Milky Way’s central black hole briefly awoke

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“Sagittarius A* is the closest supermassive black hole to us.”

Marin and colleagues used NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer satellite to measure the polarization, or direction, of the X-rays. “This direction can act as a compass, pointing to the source of emission,” Marin says. And it pointed straight at the black hole.

That polarization also suggests that the light came from at least one X-ray pulse roughly 200 years ago, the team says. The X-ray fluorescence indicates that the black hole suddenly grew a million times as bright as it is now. It’s unknown how often such pulses happen. It’s also not clear what exactly caused Sagittarius A* to flare. “It could be a giant molecular cloud that was slowly accreted, or a very big star that passed by and was accreted all at once,” Marin says. “We don’t know yet.”

 

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