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The colossal black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy will soon to get a big, tasty meal, astronomers say.
A humongous gas cloud is on a collision course for the Milky Way's core — the home of Sagittarius A* (pronounced "Sagittarius A-star"), which scientists suspect is a supermassive black hole with the mass of 4 million suns.
When the huge gas cloud arrives in the vicinity, which it will appear to us to do in mid-2013, it will surely be swallowed up by the hungry black hole, scientists say.
Astrophysicist Stefan Gillessen of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Munich, Germany, has been observing the Milky Way's center for about 20 years. So far, he's seen only two stars come as close to Sagittarius A* as the cloud will.
A humongous gas cloud is on a collision course for the Milky Way's core — the home of Sagittarius A* (pronounced "Sagittarius A-star"), which scientists suspect is a supermassive black hole with the mass of 4 million suns.
When the huge gas cloud arrives in the vicinity, which it will appear to us to do in mid-2013, it will surely be swallowed up by the hungry black hole, scientists say.
Astrophysicist Stefan Gillessen of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Munich, Germany, has been observing the Milky Way's center for about 20 years. So far, he's seen only two stars come as close to Sagittarius A* as the cloud will.
Milky Way's Giant Black Hole to Eat Space Cloud in 2013
Scientists are eager to observe a large gas cloud fall into the Milky Way's central supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*.
www.space.com
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