Boom

This is not exactly cheery news (I don't like the idea of a black hole eating the galaxy), but it is interesting:

"By observing how this cloud lit up and faded over 10 years, we could trace back the black hole's activity 300 years ago," said team member Katsuji Koyama of Kyoto University. "The black hole was a million times brighter three centuries ago. It must have unleashed an incredibly powerful flare."

The discovery of this flare may help explain why our galaxy's central black hole, called Sagittarius A* (pronounced "A-star"), seems to be less active than those in other galaxies.

"We have wondered why the Milky Way's black hole appears to be a slumbering giant," says team leader Tatsuya Inui of Kyoto University in Japan. "But now we realize that the black hole was far more active in the past. Perhaps it's just resting after a major outburst."

Since the center of our galaxy is 26,000 light-years from Earth, both the X-ray flash and the echoes we're seeing now in Sagittarius B2 actually occurred a long time ago, roughly 26,300 years back.

I suppose we have a little time before we get sucked in ourselves.