Astronomers have been tracking a mysterious object near the center of the galaxy for decades, but new research reveals its identity and the likely number of years to come when it will be swallowed whole by a lurking supermassive black hole. The final fate of the year was shed light on there.
The center of the Milky Way constitutes the most extreme environment in the galaxy. That’s because it’s home to Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), a supermassive black hole containing about four million solar masses. It exerts a large gravitational effect on stars and other objects in the area.
One such object, known as X7, contains about 50 Earth masses and is estimated to orbit Sagittarius A* at a distance of about 170 years. Despite being tracked for decades, astronomers aren’t entirely sure what X7 actually is.
Astronomers analyzed 20 years of data from X7 and found the data to be stretched over time. It’s also getting faster, now traveling at about 700 miles per second (1,127 km).
“No other object in this region has shown such extreme evolution,” said Anna Ciurlo, lead author of the study. “At first it had the shape of a comet, and people thought it might have been shaped by a stellar wind or a jet of particles from a black hole. Something must have put this cloud in a particular orbit in a particular direction.”
Anna Ciurlo/UCLA
All objects within this region tend to stretch in strong gravity, but X7 undergoes a much more dramatic shape change than others. And this could be the key to understanding its identity.
Another class of objects, called G objects, also look like dust clouds, but lost less mass than expected and had denser cores as they approached Sagittarius A* in 2014. indicates that This suggests that it was a star encased in a dusty shroud, and X7 could be a new class of object that is only dusty. They propose that it may have been ejected after two stars collided.
We know the recent past, but what’s in store for X7? The team’s trajectory calculations indicate that X7 will be closest to the supermassive black hole around 2036 and unlikely to survive the encounter. is. Immediately after that, he was swallowed whole and never returned.
“We expect that the strong tidal forces exerted by the galactic black hole will eventually tear X7 apart before making a full orbit,” said Mark Morris, co-author of the study.
This research astrophysics journal.
Source: UCLA
