12/23/2025
Sagittarius A*, the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole, is spinning at high speed—and oddly, not in alignment with our galaxy’s rotation.
Now, astronomers may finally know why. Using data from the Event Horizon Telescope, scientists have found compelling evidence that Sagittarius A* is the result of a colossal cosmic merger. Billions of years ago, the Milky Way likely collided with another galaxy, Gaia-Enceladus, whose central black hole merged with our own. This violent encounter may have tilted the black hole’s spin axis and amplified its rotation rate.
Spanning 23.5 million kilometers (14.6 million miles) wide and weighing 4 million times the mass of our Sun, Sagittarius A* accounts for just 0.0003% of the Milky Way’s mass—but it plays a critical role in shaping our galaxy. This new study, published in Nature Astronomy, supports the idea that supermassive black holes can grow not just by feeding on gas and dust, but by consuming other black holes during galactic mergers.
The upcoming LISA mission, set to launch in 2035, could soon detect gravitational waves from such ancient mergers, offering direct evidence of these cataclysmic cosmic unions. The discovery adds a vital piece to the puzzle of how galaxies—and their black holes—evolve.
📄 RESEARCH PAPER
📌 Yihan Wang & Bing Zhang, "Evidence of a past merger of the Galactic Centre black hole", Nature Astronomy (2024)