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A proof of this can be extracted from Steinberg's paper "Générateurs, relations et revêtements de groupes algébriques". If Ive understood it correctly, he shows that a Cartan subgroup of the universal cover of $SL_2(K)$ (for a field $K$ with at least 4 elements) is generated by elements $h(t)$ for $t$ a nonzero element of the field, that in particular satisfy $h(tu^2)=h(t)h(u^2)$, and the center of the universal central extension is the kernel of the map from the Cartan subgroup to $K^*$ taking $h(t)$ to $t$. In the case when $K$ is the reals, this kernel is generated by $h(-1)$ as every element is a square or a square times $-1$. So the center of the universal central extension is generated by $h(-1)$ and in particular is cyclic. The center is known be be at least $Z$, so the center of the universal central extension is exactly $Z$.