If the Milky was does in fact have a black hole in the center, will the entire Milky Way eventually be drawn in, (like vacuuming a sheet off of a bed), or are certain parts too far away? Is there a big sphere of empty space around a black hole?

No, the popular picture of a black hole as a huge vacuum cleaner sucking in everything around it is inaccurate. Black holes, even the one at the center of our galaxy, are very small. Only if you get very close to a black hole's event horizon does it start pulling everything in. So no, most of the galaxy will not eventually fall into the hole. Whether black holes have empty space around them or not depends on their environment. There may be objects or gas close enough to fall in, or there may not be. Many black holes have disks of infalling material around their equators.

This page was last updated June 27, 2015.