New light on the origin of the gigantic black hole at the center of the Milky Way: Sagittarius A * (Sgr A *), with a mass of about 4 million times the Sun, is the result of the aggregation of a set of lighter black holes , about 400, which orbiting lost energy until they merged. This is indicated by the study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society journal, coordinated by Roberto Capuzzo Dolcetta, of the Physics department of the Sapienza University of Rome, in collaboration with the École Normale Supérieure of Paris.
The study is based on simulations carried out by the computers of the Amaldi della Sapienza research center. Sagittarius A * is a very intense radio source located in the constellation of Sagittarius at the center of the Milky Way. Its identification was awarded in 2020 with the Nobel Prize in Physics to Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genzel, who revealed the existence of this giant black hole by measuring the movements of stars in the central region of our galaxy.
According to the authors of the study, “while the origin of the so-called stellar black holes has a well-established physical explanation: they are what remains of extinct massive stars, the formation of supermassive black holes is still uncertain. Our hypothesis - they conclude - is that they are the result of the very rapid aggregation, through successive collisions, of a group of lighter black holes transported to the center of the Milky Way by the star clusters that hosted them and which, while orbiting, have progressively lost energy ". Until it merges into a gigantic cosmic cannibal.