{"id":123616,"date":"2021-06-09T17:22:18","date_gmt":"2021-06-10T00:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/scientists-debate-the-existence-of-the-milky-ways-supermassive-black-hole"},"modified":"2021-06-09T17:22:18","modified_gmt":"2021-06-10T00:22:18","slug":"scientists-debate-the-existence-of-the-milky-ways-supermassive-black-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/scientists-debate-the-existence-of-the-milky-ways-supermassive-black-hole","title":{"rendered":"Scientists debate the existence of the Milky Ways supermassive black hole"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MV6yAShhLh8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A ball of gas around the Milky Way\u2019s black hole has sparked a new debate. Could it be a massive puff of dark matter?<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>The orbit of S2 and its stellar companions indicated that they were circling around a massive object, about 4 million times the mass of the Sun. Although astronomers could not directly see the object, they knew it could only be one thing.<\/p>\n<p>By 1974, the object, eventually dubbed <a class href=\"https:\/\/www.inverse.com\/article\/62316-new-class-of-objects-orbiting-around-black-hole\">Sagittarius A*<\/a>, was more or less solidified as your own local <a class href=\"https:\/\/www.inverse.com\/science\/oldest-supermassive-black-hole-just-too-big\">supermassive black hole<\/a>. Since then, scientists have made several follow-up observations to reestablish the existence of this dark, lurking beast in the Milky Way \u2014 even turning one of the largest virtual telescopes in the world on it.<\/p>\n<p>But not everyone seems to agree on the true nature of Sagittarius A*. A recent study claims that the black hole of our galaxy is not a black hole at all. Instead, it gives a more exotic take on physics that isn\u2019t yet proven: that Sagittarius A* is an imposter, not a black hole but a massive, fluffy ball of fermionic dark matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A ball of gas around the Milky Way\u2019s black hole has sparked a new debate. Could it be a massive puff of dark matter? The orbit of S2 and its stellar companions indicated that they were circling around a massive object, about 4 million times the mass of the Sun. Although astronomers could not directly [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":631,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/631"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}