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The center of the galaxy is almost certainly rotating, and is a supermassive black hole, not a point.
by bashinator 10y ago
The center of the galaxy is almost certainly rotating, and is a supermassive black hole, not a point.
- akiselev 10y agoThat's just the massive object at the center of our galaxy.
- bashinator 10y agoSince it's well agreed that virtually every galaxy (spiral or elliptical) has a central supermassive black hole, it's fair at this point to call it part of the galaxy.
- kijin 10y agoA black hole is a point. Its size is zero, regardless of its mass. Its event horizon has a size, but we don't need to care about that. We do, however, need to care about the all the stuff that's revolving around that point, because even a slight imbalance will cause the galactic center of mass (barycenter) to move away from the black hole. Things get pretty wobbly out there.