Do Earth-Like Planets Orbit Our Galaxy's Black Hole?

‘Blanets’ could form from the ice-covered dust particles that circle these cosmic colossi

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Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are theorised to be present at the centres of galaxies across the universe. They are Herculean celestial objects that consume gas and dust via an accretion disc and burp out jets of X-ray radiation from their core – jets so powerful they can be spotted from billions of light years away. This doesn’t sound like a hospitable environment for planets, but recent research led by Dr Keiichi Wada, an astrophysicist at Kagoshima University in Japan, suggests it could be.