(OPINION) BIN – The Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way is acting strangely and sending a Celestial “Winking” signal at the Earth. The enormous black hole at the center of our galaxy is acting in an increasingly unusual manner, making stars dance around it and blinking in our direction. One rabbi noted that in their quest for answers to the mysteries of the stars, scientists are finally coming closer to what is explicitly written in the Bible.
At the center of our galaxy, 26,000 light-years away, is a supermassive black hole known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), which is four million times as massive as the Sun. Because the black hole is so massive, even light cannot escape Sgr A*making it impossible for scientists to observe it directly but by observing the blackhole’s interactions with bright stars or dust clouds that surround it scientists can understand what is happening with Sgr A*.
On the night of May 13, 2019, UCLA astronomer Tuan Do was observing Sgr A* from the Keck Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. In a span of just two hours, the black hole became 75 times brighter in the near-infrared band of the light spectrum. The flareup was exceptional. In the 20 years since astronomers have monitored Sgr A*, the next-brightest event has only been half as dazzling as this one. Astronomers had several suggestions as to what may have caused it (close encounters with other astral objects, passing dust clouds) but they are still unsure. READ MORE
