Milky Way’s Black Hole Eats Asteroids says NASA

At the center of our spiral Milky Way Galaxy is what scientists believe is a giant black hole. New results from astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory indicate what appear to be asteroids being vaporized by the singularity.

According to a statement from NASA, Chandra has detected X-ray flares about once a day, over several years, from the supermassive black hole known as Sagittarius A*, or “Sgr A*” for short.

The flares, which typically last for a few hours, have a brightness ranging from a few times to nearly one hundred times that of the black hole’s regular output. In addition to the Chandra observatory, the flares also have been seen in infrared data from ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile.

“People have had doubts about whether asteroids could form at all in the harsh environment near a supermassive black hole,” said Kastytis Zubovas of the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, and lead author of the report appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. “It’s exciting because our study suggests that a huge number of them are needed to produce these flares.”

According to researchers, it is believed that a cloud of Asteroids exists around Sgr A* which is comprised of literally trillions of asteroids and comets which were likely torn away from their parent stars.

“An asteroid’s orbit can change if it ventures too close to a star or planet near Sgr A*,” said co-author Sergei Nayakshin, also of the University of Leicester. “If it’s thrown toward the black hole, it’s doomed.”

From the observations, the astronomers have deduced that the size of the asteroids would have to be something larger than about six miles in radius in order to generate the flares observed. Smaller asteroids may also be consumed, but would be too hard to detect.

Additional information about the findings, as well as additional images from Chandra can be found at http://www.nasa.gov/chandra.