IS THERE A SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE AT THE CENTER OF THE MILKY WAY?

DOI10.1142/S0218271809014820zbMATH Open1168.83300arXiv0808.2624OpenAlexW2109737215MaRDI QIDQ3394745FDOQ3394745

Authors: Mark Reid 

Publication date: 8 September 2009

Published in: International Journal of Modern Physics D (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: This review outlines the observations that now provide an overwhelming scientific case that the center of our Milky Way Galaxy harbors a supermassive black hole. Observations at infrared wavelength trace stars that orbit about a common focal position and require a central mass (M) of 4 million solar masses within a radius of 100 Astronomical Units. Orbital speeds have been observed to exceed 5,000 km/s. At the focal position there is an extremely compact radio source (Sgr A*), whose apparent size is near the Schwarzschild radius (2GM/c^2). This radio source is motionless at the ~1 km/s level at the dynamical center of the Galaxy. The mass density required by these observations is now approaching the ultimate limit of a supermassive black hole within the last stable orbit for matter near the event horizon.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/0808.2624

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zbMATH Keywords

galactic centerSgr A*supermassive Black hole

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Black holes (83C57) Galactic and stellar structure (85A15) Research exposition (monographs, survey articles) pertaining to relativity and gravitational theory (83-02)

Cites Work

• Systolic and hyper-systolic algorithms for the gravitational \(N\)-body problem, with an application to Brownian motion

Cited In (6)

• Toward the event horizon -- the supermassive black hole in the Galactic Center
• The Milky Way's supermassive black hole: how good a case is it? A challenge for astrophysics \& philosophy of science
• Estimating the parameters of the Sgr A\(^*\) black hole
• Are we living near the center of a local void?
• Static isolated horizons: \(SU(2)\) invariant phase space, quantization, and black hole entropy
• Black hole clusters in our galaxy

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