WHETHER MILKYWAY COLLAPSE INTO THE BLACKHOLE AT ITS CENTRE?

The black hole at the center of our galaxy, known as Sagittarius A, is very massive and very compact. It has a mass of about 4 million times that of our sun. But it's also very far away from us and most of the stars in the galaxy. It's about 27,000 light-years away from Earth, which is roughly 250 trillion kilometers or 155 trillion miles. That's a lot of space between us and the black hole.

Gravity is a force that attracts objects with mass to each other. The more mass an object has, the stronger its gravity. The closer two objects are, the stronger their gravitational attraction. One might think that the black hole's gravity would be so strong that it would pull everything in the galaxy towards it. But that's not how it works.

You see, gravity is not the only force acting on the stars and planets in the galaxy.

There's also another force called centripetal force, which is the force that keeps an object moving in a circular path around another object. For example, when you swing a ball on a string around your head, the string provides the centripetal force that keeps the ball from flying away.

The same thing happens with the stars and planets in the galaxy. They are moving very fast around the center of the galaxy, where the black hole is. Their speed provides them with enough centripetal force to balance out the gravitational pull of the black hole. This means they don't fall into it, but rather orbit around it in a stable way.

Of course, this balance is not perfect. Sometimes, things can get too close to the black hole and get sucked in by its gravity. This can happen when stars collide with each other, or when gas and dust clouds get too dense near the center of the galaxy. When this happens, we can see some spectacular phenomena, such as jets of radiation and matter shooting out from near the black hole's event horizon.

But these events are rare and don't affect most of the galaxy. For most of us, living in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way, we are safe from being devoured by the black hole at its center. We can enjoy its beauty from afar, as it casts a dark shadow surrounded by a bright ring of light, which is actually light bent by its gravity.

So, the reason why the Milky Way doesn't collapse into the black hole at its center is because gravity and motion are in balance. It's not because the black hole is too lazy or too full to swallow the whole galaxy. It's just physics.