Earth is now 2,000 light-years closer to the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole

At the center of our galaxy, with a mass about 4 million times that of our sun, is a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A *.

And great news! It turns out that scientists have found that we are 2,000 light years closer to this gigantic black hole than we thought.

This does not mean that we are currently on a collision course with a black hole. No, it is simply the result of a more accurate model of the Milky Way based on new data.

Over the past 15 years, a Japanese radio astronomy project, VERA, has been collecting data. Using a technique called interferometry, VERA collected data from telescopes across Japan and combined it with data from other existing projects to create what is essentially the most accurate map of the Milky Way.

By pinpointing the location and velocity of around 99 specific points in our galaxy, VERA concluded that the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A, at the center of our galaxy, is actually 25,800 light-years from Earth, nearly 2,000 light-years closer than that. we previously believed.

Furthermore, the new model calculates that the Earth is moving faster than we thought. Older models recorded Earth’s speed at 220 kilometers (136 miles) per second, orbiting the center of the galaxy. VERA’s new model makes us move at 227 kilometers (141 miles) per second.

Not bad!

VERA now hopes to increase the accuracy of its model by increasing the amount of points it collects data from by expanding into the East Asian VLBI Network (EAVN) and by collecting data from a larger suite of radio telescopes located in Japan, Korea and China.