At http://phys.org/print339745850.html … the NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory has detected huge x-ray from a supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy. The astronomers had been looking at something else – which proved to be a damp squib. They had been tracking a giant cloud of gas that was predicted to come close enough to the black hole to provide its lunch – with fireworks as an accompaniment. The black hole stoically refused to acknowledge the presence of the gas cloud. Perhaps it had a touch of colic as it let out a burp – a massive x-ray flare. This sort of thing happens on the Sun but does the galaxy itself also emit the equivalent of CMEs – but on a much large scale.
At http://phys.org/print339746916.html … NASAs Hubble Space Telescope looked at the light emitted from a distant quasar and used this to date a prehistoric explosion of matter from the Milky Way – and came up with a date of 2 million years ago. It is estimated it took that long to reach the quasar. The research will be published in Astrophysical Research Letters in the coming year.