Then last week the Hubble Space Telescope, fresh from its $629 million in-orbit repair last December, found as strong a piece of evidence as the heavens ever offer for a natural phenomenon that, by definition, can’t be seen. Directly overhead in the constellation Virgo, hot gas is swirling around the center of a galaxy named M87 at 1.2 million miles an hour, according to HST’s measurements. To keep the speedy gas from flying away, there has to be an extremely massive object – 2 billion to 3 billion times the weight of our sun. And all of that has to be crammed into M87’s tiny core, which is no larger than our solar system. The one thing that fits those specifications is a black hole, an object so massive and hence so gravitationally powerful that not even the ghostliest ray of light can escape its clench. ““If it isn’t a black hole, then I don’t know what it is,’’ said astrophysicist Holland Ford of the Space Telescope Science Institute. Although astronomers had been pretty sure super-massive black holes existed at galaxies’ cores, Hubble’s discovery leaves no doubts. Now, can a telescope read Penthouse?
