The Hole World In Its Hands

“Known as Sagittarius A*, the object is a staggering four million times the mass of our Sun. What you see is a central dark region where the hole resides, circled by the light coming from super-heated gas accelerated by immense gravitational forces.” Black hole: First picture of Milky Way monster. (I held up this photo for my kid this morning and said, “Black hole, Son.” I got nothing.)

+ SciAm: The historic image of Sagittarius A* is the culmination of a decades-long astronomical quest—and a crucial step toward a new understanding of black holes, gravity and spacetime. (As an added bonus, they found the Nasdaq in there…)