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In March 2000, two astronomers made an extraordinary discovery, one that is set to overturn our understanding of how the universe formed.
We're never going to see a time like this in astronomy again.
Really, the air is filled with new discoveries and new ideas.
What they discovered was a very simple relationship, a relationship between the galaxy we live in and the most destructive force in the universe, a supermassive black hole. It set the world of cosmology alight.
People were not that excited about supermassive black holes. The general astronomer did not care that much about supermassive black holes. Now they have to and, now they'd better.
The ultimate aim of cosmology is to understand how the universe was formed. One of the most important questions is how galaxies were created, because without them we wouldn't exist.
Galaxies contain almost all of the stars we see in the universe and, maybe the places where all stars in the universe will be created. And stars are what produce oxygen, carbon, planets, everything you need for life. And without life you don't get astronomers.
We see our galaxy, the Milky Way, as a band of stars in the sky. In fact, it is a giant rotating disc, 200,000 light years wide. It contains over 200 billion stars like our own sun, circling slowly around the center.
overturn: abolish, invalidate, or reverse (an established fact or system, legal decision, etc.)
disc: a flat, thin circular object
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