The Milky Way’s Center Is a Cornucopia of Black Holes
Astronomers have detected evidence of a handful of the likely thousands of light-gobbling objects in the middle of the galaxy.
For the last few years, Chuck Hailey has had the center of the Milky Way hanging in his office at Columbia University. The picture, pinned above his desk, shows a bright orange and yellow blob—the glow of cosmic gas as it gets devoured by the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. Astronomers captured this glow using X-rays, a versatile type of radiation that’s good for seeing through galactic gas as well as human bodies.
Some of the X-ray emissions astronomers detect coming from the galactic center come from this black
