Black holes are among the most profound predictions of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Originally studied as a mere mathematical consequence of the theory rather than as physically relevant objects, they soon became thought of as generic and sometimes inevitable outcomes of the gravitational collapse that initially forms a galaxy.
In fact, most physicists have suspected that our own galaxy revolves around a supermassive black hole at its centre. There are other ideas too – such as “dark matter” (an invisible substance thought to make up most of the matter in the universe). But now an international team of astronomers, including a team that I led from the University of Central Lancashire, has unveiled the first image of the object lurking at the centre of the Milky Way – and it is a supermassive black hole.
