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The center of the Milky Way galaxy, with the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), located in the middle.
PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA/UMASS/D.WANG ET AL., STSCI

By Sarah Gibbens
PUBLISHED APRIL 4, 2018


A gaggle of black holes has been found clustered around the center of our home galaxy, the Milky Way—and the discovery hints at a much larger population of black holes hidden across the galaxy. The discover offers a new test bed for understanding the ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves.

For years, scientists have known that a monster black hole sits in the middle of the galaxy. Called Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the compact object is more than four million times as massive as our sun, but it's packed into a region of space no bigger than the distance between Earth and our star.

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