Black hole may be devouring asteroids

National Geographic : Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, produces bright x-ray and IR flares that are as much as a hundred times brighter than the black hole’s more typical output of radiation. Kastytis Zubovas of the University of Leicester in the UK and colleagues have examined data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and believe the flares are a result of asteroids being drawn into the black hole’s accretion disk. After the asteroids get torn apart, their remains vaporize in the accretion disk’s hot gases and produce the brilliant flares. Zubovas and his team think that asteroids need to be at least six miles wide to create flares bright enough to be observed from Earth.