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We Have New Record For Fastest Star Enlarging Supermassive Black Hole

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A newly discovered star is so close to the center of our galaxy’s supermassive black hole that it completes an orbit in just four years. It is the shortest orbit for any of the stars around Sagittarius A*. This is an oval-shaped journey around a black hole that takes the star to an orbital speed of more than 2.5 percent of the speed of light. This discovery adds exciting new information about the strange dynamics of the center of the Milky Way. Although the center of our galaxy is quite quiet compared to other galaxies, the environment around Sgr A* is an extreme place. Black holes are monsters, which have a mass about 4 million times the mass of the Sun. Before astronomers confirmed its existence with live images, scientists deduced its existence and calculated its mass based on the star locked in orbit around Sgr A*. The star, called S2, is just one of a group of stars known as S-stars, which follow a long, sharp elliptical orbit around Sgr A*, with a black hole at one end of the