What is in the middle of our galaxy?

Discussion in 'Science and Nature' started by findme, Aug 17, 2010.

  1. I have always seen pictures of the galaxy with a huge light in the middle of it all. Is the center of the galaxy a star or something?

    oh yeah... and do all galaxies have this?
     

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  2. Wikipedia man, Wikipedia.
     
  3. ah, I figured it was some sort of star.

    now another question.. Why do we have a black hole in the middle of the galaxy?
     
  4. It's a chewy carmel center:D:smoking:

    No wait! That's what's in the center of a tootsie roll pop :)
     
  5. lol!!!
     
  6. they believe that that is how galaxy's are formed (formed in the sense that they are a mass of things grouped together in one area). Almost every cluster of something (a galaxy or just a group of stars) has a Black Hole at it's center. Usually the larger the Black Hole the larger the amount of matter around it.
     
  7. I have always heard it was a black hole but never wondered about the question im about ot ask until now. If its a black hole, why is it bright light?
     
  8. that is the matter accelerating as it enters the black hole. It's bright until the matter passes the event horizon then any light that the matter emits can't escape the gravity from the black hole. That light is one only two ways we can actually see a black hole. The other is from radiation that is emitted at it's magnetic poles (but that part isn't actually in the visible spectrum).
     
  9. thanks. interesting.
     
  10. Oops! Neither is the matter going into the black hole :) I think you'll find they're both xray sources.

    There are a few more ways of detecting black holes, I've never heard of measuring the the light from the matter being sucked in, just the huge emissions from the poles so to speak.

    #1 Gravitational lensing is also used to find black holes, at least large mass ones that bend light to extremes (relatively).
    #2: Gravitational pull of a black hole, most notably by watching stars/planets orbit around an empty part of space.
     
  11. Are we moving closer to this black hole, due to the gravity sucking matter in to it?
     
  12. Nope, we're quite far away (53k light years or so). Just keep in mind that although a very freaky occurrence in nature they exhibit the same gravitational pull as any other mass in the galaxy.
     
  13. a marijuana planet :metal:
     
  14. black hole


    Humans cant look up and see our center galaxy. To much cosmic dust. What we can do is point an infrared camera and see a huge hole where light cant escape.

    Cant be a star. A star in the center of our galaxy wouldnt have the gravity to hold everything together.
     

  15. Black holes tend to suck everything up. So the closer you are to the black hole the stronger its pull. Wouldnt it make since that the closer you are the more objects will be cought and pulled in closer.


    Interestingly, we cant actually travel out far enough into space to see our own glaxay. But we can look at other similar galaxys and come up with a good guess.


    Its all about the amount of star dust around and time
     

  16. you can watch a plant and see if it has a crazy orbit.
     

  17. No the universe is still expanding.


    One of these
    Dark energy/mater/(hawking radiation?) Makes up sum 90%* of the total mass in all of the universe. and it doesnt weight enough to slow down the expantion.
     
  18. how do you know it makes the sum of 90% of the universe?
     
  19. Yeah, I can't believe that we're in the middle of a thick-ass dust cloud. I heard somewhere (I wish I had the source) that if we WEREN'T in a dust cloud, the center of the Milky Way would be so bright that it would be daytime even when the sun is down.

    So does that mean that planets with life (at least as we know it) would most likely form IN these dust clouds?

    Check out this video:

    [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANAX--zLUps]YouTube - Universe Zoom Out (HD) / Solar Fields - Leaving Home[/ame]
     

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