http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/ball-gas-racing-around-black-hole-our-galaxy-s-heart > Earlier this year, astronomers were looking for signs that S2, the star with the closest known orbit to the supermassive black hole thought to be at the center of the Milky Way, might—as predicted by Albert Einstein—deviate from the orbital path proscribed by Newtonian gravity. > But while they were watching, they spied something else: three bright infrared flares unrelated to the star (visualization above). Those flares, the researchers reveal today, are the signs of superheated gas racing almost as close to the black hole as possible without getting sucked in—at 30% the speed of light.