At about 2.7 million years old, the twin stars seem to be fairly young. Scientists said they appear to orbit each other at just the right distance: If they were too spread out, the black hole's gravity would rip them apart.

Astronomers have used the Very Large Telescope to discover the first binary stars around the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way.

There could be planets around the supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy – and we may be ready to find them, scientists say. The finding not only sheds light on such stars, and how they might be able to survive such extreme environments.