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Image via Wikipedia<\/p><\/div>\n

At the heart of every galaxy there is thought to be a supermassive black hole. Our black hole is known as Sagittarius A*, and as far as these go, it is very quiet. But that could change in 2013 when a “suicidal gas cloud” gets sucked into it, causing the release of a lot of radiation. This is the first time I have heard of such an event in our galaxy, so it is interesting that they predict it to occur so close to 2012.<\/p>\n

The kilo-electronvolt X-ray emission of Sgr A* may brighten significantly when the cloud reaches pericentre. There may also be a giant radiation flare<\/strong> several years from now if the cloud breaks up and its fragments feed gas into the central accretion zone. [Nature<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Since Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) first started observing Sgr A* in 1992 they have seen just two stars come close to the event horizon (an amazing 40 billion kilometers from the centre), but neither were sucked in. So this event will be a real first.<\/p>\n
“When we look at the black holes in the centers of other galaxies, we see them get bright and then fade, but we never know what is actually happening,” said Eliot Quataert<\/a>, a theoretical astrophysicist and University of California, Berkeley professor of astronomy. “This is an unprecedented opportunity to obtain unique observations and insight into the processes that go on as gas falls into a black hole, heats up and emits light. It’s a neat window onto a black hole that’s actually capturing gas as it spirals in.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There is some <\/em>activity at the black hole:<\/p>\n
For several years, NASA’s Chandra spacecraft has detected X-ray flares about once a day coming from our galaxy’s central black hole, which is known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A* for short). These flares may be caused by asteroids falling into the supermassive black hole’s maw, according to the study<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Although we didn’t have the instruments back then, X-ray echoes have scientists thinking that roughly 100 years ago the output of Sgr A* brightened by a factor of a million<\/strong>, probably due to it swallowing a planet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the heart of every galaxy there is thought to be a supermassive black hole. Our black hole is known as Sagittarius A*, and as far as these go, it is very quiet. But that could change in 2013 when a “suicidal gas cloud” gets sucked into it, causing the release of a lot of radiation. This is the first time I have heard of such an event in our galaxy, so it is interesting that they predict it to occur so close to 2012.
\nThe kilo-electronvolt X-ray emission of Sgr A* may brighten significantly when the cloud reaches pericentre. There may also be a giant radiation flare several years from now if the cloud breaks up and its fragments feed gas into the central accretion zone. [Nature]
\nSince Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) first started observing Sgr A* in 1992 they have seen just two stars …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[312],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2635"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2661,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2635\/revisions\/2661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}