It seems that the surroundings of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A * – a very busy place, the study of which can give even more, than expected. 
Photo from open sources Last year about supermassive black hole Sagittarius A * in the center of our Galaxy was noticed a gas cloud of G 2, weighing approximately three Earths. Since these objects, according to calculations, should soon come closer to a distance that only two hundred times the distance from our planet to the sun, a recent x-ray outbreak from this area naturally caused interest of astronomers. Has the black hole already begun to devour the gas cloud, heating it and causing it to radiate in x-ray range? Magnetars can be extremely energetic neighbors: in In 2004, a gamma ray flash from SGR 1806-20 reached the Earth. emitting more energy in 0.1 s than the Sun in a hundred years glow. Fortunately, this magnetar is on the other side. Galaxies. A similar explosion 10 light years from Earth destroyed would be the ozone layer, and in brightness would be equivalent to a nuclear explosion 12 kt from a distance of 7.5 km. (Here and below are NASA illustrations, Chandra.) However, more detailed observations made with using space-based telescopes NuSTAR and Chandra, not revealed traces of cloud destruction by a black hole. Yes and previous calculations such an incident with the concomitant heating of the cloud to million degrees was supposed to begin only in September 2013. AND nevertheless, telescopes and astronomers worked not in vain. April 26th NuSTAR found that the x-ray signal is repeated every 3.76 s. A 29 April Chandra localized at 0.38 light-years from a black hole very unusual object. What telescopes found is called magnetar, the essence of a neutron star with an exceptionally strong magnetic field reaching up to 100 billion tons. Most properties of magnetars close to ordinary neutron stars: a pea from their substance weighs 100 million tons; with a diameter of 40,000–50,000 times smaller than the Sun, they do not inferior to him in mass, and so on. And at the same time they are essentially differ not so fast rotation (one revolution in 1-10 s), and their a magnetic field in interaction with other factors generates periodic radiation in the x-ray and even in the gamma range. Magnetars are rare, there are very few of them “near” Earth. And it’s not only that they do not pamper us with their birth. Time the existence of a strong magnetic field does not exceed 10,000 years, which on an astronomical scale is not very long, and after it the disappearance of gamma and x-ray radiation from them comes to naught. That’s why there are only 13 of them in the core of our Galaxy, and taking into account the new magnetara – 14. In the rest of the Galaxy we know no more a dozen of such objects. The peculiarity of this particular instance, dubbed SGR J1745-2900, in that it is located near the geometric center of the Milky Way. Also he so close to Sagittarius A * that powerful gravitational fields both objects generate in this region a number of interesting processes associated with the operation of the theory of relativity. 
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The nearest surroundings of Sagittarius A *, as it turns out, are not saturated only with gas clouds and ordinary stars, but also with magnetars. According to GR, in conditions of such a strong gravitational impact time should flow much more slowly than in the region of the Earth. So for as a neutron star follows an elliptical orbit around black hole in several million solar masses rotation of SGR J1745-2900 about its axis should accelerate at the point where it farthest from BH, and slow down where they draw closer to smallest distance. Since the frequency of x-ray Magnetar flashes are directly related to rotation, very soon terrestrial telescopes will be able to test this theory effect relativity with unprecedented accuracy. True, a team of astronomers led by Kaya Mori of the University of Toronto (Canada) warns: it will be possible to measure the effect of time dilation, only if the orbit of rotation of the magnetar SGR J1745-2900 around Sagittarius A * is very elongated, and the difference between the nearest and the its remote points are very large. So, very close to supermassive black hole Sagittarius A * can rotate not only gas clouds, but also objects of stellar (and planetary?) scale. However, some astronomers have already claimed that inside the cloud G 2 a planet or an asteroid may be hiding. If so, then the neighborhood supermassive black holes are probably quite saturated extremely interesting objects. And observing them in such close proximity to superstrong gravitational field promise astronomy unique Prospects … Prepared by Nature News. Time Galaxy Sun Black Hole
