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By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News
There is a giant black hole at the centre of our galaxy, a study has confirmed.
German astronomers tracked the movement of 28 stars circling the centre of the
Milky Way, using the European Southern Observatory in Chile.
The black hole is four million times heavier than our Sun, according to the
paper in The Astrophysical Journal.
Black holes are objects whose gravity is so great that nothing - including
light - can escape them.
According to Dr Robert Massy, of the Royal Astronomical Society, the results
suggest that galaxies form around giant black holes in the way that a pearl
forms around grit.
'The black pearl'
Dr Massy said: "Although we think of black holes as somehow threatening, in the
sense that if you get too close to one you are in trouble, they may have had a
role in helping galaxies to form - not just our own, but all galaxies.
"They had a role in bringing matter together and if you had a high enough
density of matter then you have the conditions in which stars could form.
"Thus the first generation of stars and galaxies could have come into
existence".
The researchers from the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in
Germany said the black hole was 27,000 light years, or 158 thousand, million,
million miles from the Earth.
"Undoubtedly the most spectacular aspect of our 16-year study, is that it has
delivered what is now considered to be the best empirical evidence that
super-massive black holes do really exist," said Professor Reinhard Genzel,
head of the research team.
"The stellar orbits in the galactic centre show that the central mass
concentration of four million solar masses must be a black hole, beyond any
reasonable doubt."