Supermassive Black Holes 超大质量黑洞 - 8

In every galaxy¹ scientists looked at, they found evidence for a supermassive black hole.

NGC 3115
NGC 3377
NGC 3379
In M31 and M32

In total there is probably 20-30 or so black holes that have been found.

Supermassive black holes were supposed to be rare, but Hubble was finding them everywhere, both feeding in active galaxies² and lurking³ quietly in ordinary galaxies.

Pretty soon we got used to the idea that everything we would look at would have a black hole in it. You know, after the first three or four cases, we are beginning to wonder: does every one have a black hole?

One by one we were seeing this picture sort of emerge out of the fog that, that every galaxy, almost every galaxy had a supermassive black hole in it. It was really quite astonishing.

Far from being rare freaks of nature, the Nukers began to suspect that all galaxies could have giant black holes at their hearts. If this was true, it would revolutionize ideas of what a galaxy actually is. More disturbingly, it meant there could be a supermassive black hole lurking at the heart of our very own galaxy, the Milky⁴ Way.

Andrea Ghez has been coming to Hawaii for the last five years, trying to find out if there is a supermassive black hole in the middle of the Milky Way.

When I first started thinking about astronomy, it never occurred to me that there might be a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. The idea was that galaxies rotated just around the mass of the center, which was just stars and gas and dust, nothing particularly exotic.

Andrea Ghez has been using a telescope even more powerful than Hubble, the Keck Telescope, perched 14,000 feet up on the sacred mountain of Mauna Kea. The Keck Telescope is the biggest optical telescope in the world. It has a vast mirror, ten meters across, made up of 36 segments of highly polished aluminized glass.

freak: a person, animal, or plant with a physical abnormality

perch: be situated above or on the edge of something

aluminize: treat with aluminum; cover with aluminum

1 galaxy   

n.星系；银河系；一群(杰出或著名的人物)

参考例句：

• The earth is one of the planets in the Galaxy.地球是银河系中的星球之一。
• The company has a galaxy of talent.该公司拥有一批优秀的人才。

2 galaxies   

星系( galaxy的名词复数 )； 银河系； 一群（杰出或著名的人物）

参考例句：

• Quasars are the highly energetic cores of distant galaxies. 类星体是遥远星系的极为活跃的核心体。
• We still don't know how many galaxies there are in the universe. 我们还不知道宇宙中有多少个星系。

3 lurking   

潜在

参考例句：

• Why are you lurking around outside my house? 你在我房子外面鬼鬼祟祟的，想干什么？
• There is a suspicious man lurking in the shadows. 有一可疑的人躲在阴暗中。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

4 milky   

adj.牛奶的，多奶的；乳白色的

参考例句：

• Alexander always has milky coffee at lunchtime.亚历山大总是在午餐时喝掺奶的咖啡。
• I like a hot milky drink at bedtime.我喜欢睡前喝杯热奶饮料。