GALAXY’S SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE CLOSER TO EARTH THAN THOUGHT

The supermassive black hole hiding in the center of our galaxy is much closer to Earth, about 2,000 light-years closer, than scientists thought, according to new research out of Japan, Diane Lincoln reported for Live Science.

Not only that but our solar system is moving faster than thought as it orbits this galactic center. All this doesn't mean you need to worry that Earth is zooming toward the central behemoth or that we will get sucked up by the gravity monster, the researchers noted.

We are still quite away from the black hole, dubbed Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*): 25,800 light-years, where one light-year is about 6 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers).

The study is part of the VERA Experiment, or the VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry, whose aim is to explore the three-dimensional structure of the Milky Way.

Since we live within the Milky Way, scientists can't just take a snapshot of it to figure out its structure.

Instead, they take precise measurements of stars' sizes, positions and orbital velocities — how fast they circle the galactic center — in a scientific field called astrometry.

The resulting maps can shed light on details of our Milky Way, the stars in it and possibly the universe.

Researchers can now “measure distances of stars located farther and 30,000 light-years from our solar system,” said Tomoya Hirota, a professor in the Department of Astronomy at SOKENDAI and the leader of the data analysis team in VERA.

To do this, the researchers with VERA used four Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) telescopes in Japan. These observatories work together to achieve results comparable to one telescope with a diameter about 1,400 miles (2,300 km) across.

The resolution is so sharp that when compared to human eyesight, it would be like seeing a penny on the surface of the moon. However, VERA is designed to see things that are much farther away than the moon.

For instance, VERA can distinguish the annual positional shift of a star within 10 micro-arcseconds, which is an angle 1/360,000,000 of the distance between two tick marks on a protractor.

WEEKLY FEATURE

CHINKEE TAN SEEKS TO CREATE 100 MILLIONAIRES IN 2021