astrophysics - What is the evidence for a supermassive black hole at the center of Milky Way?

Black holes cannot be seen because they do not emit visible light or any electromagnetic radiation. Then how do astronomers infer their existence? I think it's now almost established in the scientific community that black holes do exist and certainly, there is a supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. What is the evidence for this?

Answer

Black holes cannot be seen because they do not emit visible light or any electromagnetic radiation.

This is not absolutely correct in the sense that visible light is emitted during the capture of charged matter from the radiation as it is falling into the strong gravitational potential of the black hole, but it is not strong enough to characterize a discovery of a black hole. X rays are also emitted if the acceleration of the charged particles if high, as is expected by a black hole attractive sink.

The suspicion of the existence of a black hole comes from kinematic irregularities in orbits. For example:

Doppler studies of this blue supergiant in Cygnus indicate a period of 5.6 days in orbit around an unseen companion.

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1. 
   

   An x-ray source was discovered in the constellation Cygnus in 1972 (Cygnus X-1). X-ray sources are candidates for black holes because matter streaming into black holes will be ionized and greatly accelerated, producing x-rays.

   
   


2. 
   

   A blue supergiant star, about 25 times the mass of the sun, was found which is apparently orbiting about the x-ray source. So something massive but non-luminous is there (neutron star or black hole).

   
   


3. 
   
   

   Doppler studies of the blue supergiant indicate a revolution period of 5.6 days about the dark object. Using the period plus spectral measurements of the visible companion's orbital speed leads to a calculated system mass of about 35 solar masses. The calculated mass of the dark object is 8-10 solar masses; much too massive to be a neutron star which has a limit of about 3 solar masses - hence black hole.

   
   

This is of course not a proof of a black hole - but it convinces most astronomers.

Further evidence that strengthens the case for the unseen object being a black hole is the emission of X-rays from its location, an indication of temperatures in the millions of Kelvins. This X-ray source exhibits rapid variations, with time scales on the order of a millisecond. This suggests a source not larger than a light-millisecond or 300 km, so it is very compact. The only possibilities that we know that would place that much matter in such a small volume are black holes and neutron stars, and the consensus is that neutron stars can't be more massive than about 3 solar masses.

From frequently asked questions, What evidence do we have for the existence of black holes?, first in a Google search:

Astronomers have found convincing evidence for a supermassive black hole in the center of our own Milky Way galaxy, the galaxy NGC 4258, the giant elliptical galaxy M87, and several others. Scientists verified the existence of the black holes by studying the speed of the clouds of gas orbiting those regions. In 1994, Hubble Space Telescope data measured the mass of an unseen object at the center of M87. Based on the motion of the material whirling about the center, the object is estimated to be about 3 billion times the mass of our Sun and appears to be concentrated into a space smaller than our solar system.

Again, it is only a black hole that fits these data in our general relativity model of the universe.

So the evidence for our galaxy is based on kinematic behavior of the stars and star systems at the center of our galaxy.