Best Glimpse Yet of Milky Way’s Monster Black Hole: Theoretical predictions that black holes lie at the center of galaxies have been so appealing that they are astrophysical gospel. Now, with the high resolution of the orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory, “(a)stronomers said on Wednesday they have pinpointed a tiny area at the Milky Way’s heart where a black hole with the mass of 2.6 million Suns is likely to lurk.

This does not absolutely confirm the existence of the mysterious matter-sucking drains known as black holes, but it appears to rule out any other explanations scientists can imagine for the weird cosmic behavior at our galaxy’s center.” The region, 26 million light years distant, is just 10 light minutes, or 93 million miles, across — by cosmic coincidence, in the ballpark of exactly one AU (astronomical unit), the distance from the earth to the sun. Reuters