Milky Way's Monster Black Hole

Astronomers said in early September that 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 small area that may hold the putative black hole -- about 150 million kilometers across, or the distance between Earth and the sun -- is in line with what theorists believe would be appropriate, they said.

The distance between the Earth and the sun, which astronomers call one Astronomical Unit, may seem vast to earthlings but it is minuscule on the cosmic scale, where distance is measured in light years. That is how far light travels in a year, about 9.5 trillion kilometers.

The Milky Way is 100,000 light years in diameter, and the galactic center is about 26,000 light years from Earth, they said. The area where the black hole might be is about 10 light minutes across.