There's a star orbiting a super heavy black hole.

The newspaper tells a story of humans having found a star orbiting a super heavy black hole near the center of the Milky Way.

I didn't know stars could orbit black holes, I thought black holes sucked up everything in their path.

I'm confused now.

originally posted by: Out6of9Balance

The newspaper tells a story of humans having found a star orbiting a super heavy black hole near the center of the Milky Way.

I didn't know stars could orbit black holes, I thought black holes sucked up everything in their path.

I'm confused now.

which newspaper? Link?

a reply to: RP2SticksOfDynamite

Non-American one.

The black hole is named Sagittarius A.

An article on Forbes.com mentions it's a myth black holes suck things up. They shred things that come too close to pieces and the matter that ends up in the event horizon will add to the mass of the black hole.

www.forbes.com...

Still, why does some stuff orbit a black hole and other stuff gets attracted and shredded to pieces?

a reply to: Out6of9Balance

Sagittarius A is the black hole at the center of our galaxy. Everything orbits around it.

Stars also orbit around black holes at an ever decreasing distance until they are swallowed completely.
Think of it like a giant toilet bowl. Stars are the turds that go around and around until they go into the hole.

A black hole does the same thing with its gravity like the star it was before. If you come to close, you cannot escape. If you get into the "spaghettify-zone", the gravitational forces will pull you apart.

Difference is that the prior star was much larger, so that you could not enter the zone before entering the photozone and get vaporized by millions of degrees of temperature.

There are ways for a black hole to form without destroying an orbiting secondary star.

a reply to: Out6of9Balance

If something fall's into a black hole it will be destroyed, if it is too close to the black hole tidal forced will rip it apart and due to the intense gravity near a black hole different parts of the object may also experience the flow of time differently the closer to the black hole that they are, however other than being much stronger in it's gravitational attraction than other body's a black hole can actually be orbited, there may even be world's as well as stars orbiting some of them.

If they are far enough away from the black hole to avoid extreme tidal and time differential forces then a stable orbit could even be found and as long as you do not go too close you can fly right past a black hole no problem.

Two thing's can happen to an object in orbit of any object, it can gain momentum over time through several forces including interaction with other sources of gravity, this may mean that one day it will reach what is called escape velocity having slowly spiraled away from the black hole - OR - more usually an object's orbit will slowly over time decay and it will slowly at first spiral in toward the black hole, once it get's close enough for those tidal forces to tear it apart and for time to flow differently then it will no survive much longer, by that time it is too late for it to escape - but if it is moving fast enough it could even orbit stably surprisingly close to the gravity well of the black hole.

As for that forbes myth, sorry they are only partially right, thing's are torn apart as they come close to the event horizon and undergo something scientists named Spaghetification as they are drawn toward the gravity well itself, other than that they will fall into the black hole - if it is a Hawking brown hole however there is a feint possibility that this theoretical body which would be more like a slightly denser neutron star - than a neutron star - and less like a true black hole would also have this tidal affect on object's but no where near as powerful as a true black hole - which many remain convinced DO exist despite hawking trying to dismiss them.

TRUE black holes provide one possible explanation for the universe itself existing - along with white holes but if there were no true black holes than there likely were never either any white hole's if Hawking was correct, so what the hell was the big bang then if not a white hole event - probably caused by a TRUE black hole collapsing but that is another story.