Tag: awoke

200 years ago, the Milky Way’s central black hole briefly awoke

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Sometime between the American Revolution and the California gold rush, the black hole at the Milky Way’s heart woke up.

The black hole, called Sagittarius A*, has been quiet and dim since it was discovered in the 1990s. It’s thought to have been mostly quiescent for eons. But roughly 200 years ago, the black hole, as seen from Earth, suddenly brightened as it let out a brief flare of X-rays, researchers report June 21 in Nature.

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