Iron takes in more energy to fuse than it gives out, causing the star to lose its ability to push out against the immense gravitational forces generated by its enormous mass. But once this fusion process begins forming iron, the star is on a path to violent self-destruction. As larger stars approach the ends of their lives, they start to fuse heavier and heavier elements, such as silicon or magnesium, inside their burning cores. To build a black hole, you have to start with a large star - one with a mass roughly five to 10 times that of the sun. (Image credit: EHT Collaboration) (opens in new tab) The Event Horizon Telescope has captured the first image of Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Black holes are points in space where this warping effect becomes so strong that Einstein's equations break down, causing not just all nearby matter but all nearby light to be sucked inside. Gravity, Einstein discovered, isn't produced by an unseen force, but is simply our experience of space-time curving and distorting in the presence of matter and energy. "These unprecedented observations have greatly improved our understanding of what happens at the very center of our galaxy and offer new insights on how these giant black holes interact with their surroundings."Įinstein's theory of general relativity describes how massive objects can warp the fabric of the universe, called space-time. "We were stunned by how well the ring size agreed with predictions from Einstein's theory of general relativity," Geoffrey Bower, an EHT collaborator and astronomer at Academia Sinica, Taipei, said in a statement. This new observation, which shows light being bent around the space-time-warping behemoth, puts their suspicions beyond all doubt. Scientists have long thought that an enormous supermassive black hole must lurk at the center of our galaxy, its gravity tethering the Milky Way's dust, gas, stars and planets in a loose orbit about it and causing stars closeby to circle around it rapidly.
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