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How black holes stay black

Nature volume 391, pages 17–18 (1998)Cite this article

There is probably a massive black hole at the centre of our Galaxy, and perhaps at the centre of most other ordinary galaxies. Their dimness surprises astrophysicists, but a possible explanation has been found in the behavior of the plasma they consume.

In the theory of General Relativity, black holes are concentrations of mass so great that even light cannot escape from them. Paradoxically, in extragalactic astrophysics black holes are considered to be the best way to explain the large luminosities of distant active galactic nuclei, such as quasars. More recently, evidence has been accumulating that large black holes also exist in the centres of many, perhaps most, normal galaxies — but that they cause far less radiation than expected. In a paper to be published in the Astrophysical Journal on 10 January1, Ramesh Narayan and co-workers offer an explanation of why one such candidate black hole, suspected to lie at the centre of our own Galaxy, is so remarkably quiet.

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Figure 1: Stellar proper motions in the Galactic Centre.

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  1. the Max-Planck Institut fr Extraterrestrische Physik, W-8046, Garching, Germany

    Reinhard Genzel

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  1. Reinhard Genzel
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Genzel, R. How black holes stay black. Nature 391, 17–18 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/34029

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