More impressively it will light up and become quite visible
to us and this will all happen inside of two years. It will also be an excellent field test of
our modeling to see how well they are working.
Even better we will also get a flood of new information and
ides before it is over. We rarely make
new observations without getting many new surprises that we were never able to
imagine.
Over the past few decades, our capacity to observe the
heavens has steadily increased and we are certainly in the golden age of
Astronomy.
Supermassive black hole will 'eat' gas cloud
Simulations suggest that the cloud will be ripped to bits and partially
swallowed by the black hole
14 December 2011 Last updated at 13:37 ET
Researchers have spotted a giant gas cloud spiralling into the
supermassive black hole at our galaxy's centre.
Though it is known that black holes draw in nearby material, it will be
the first chance to see one consume such a cloud.
As it is torn apart, the turbulent area around the black hole will
become unusually bright, giving astronomers a chance to learn more about it.
An
article in Nature suggests the spectacle should be visible in 2013.
Researchers using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large
Telescope estimate that despite its size, the cloud has a total mass of only
about three times that of Earth.
They have plotted the cloud's squashed, oval-shaped path and
estimate it has doubled its speed in the last seven years - to 2,350km per second.
It should spiral in to within about 40 billion kilometres of the black
hole in the middle of 2013.
###
Reviews of existing pictures from the VLT show the cloud speeding up in
recent years
Our local supermassive black hole, dubbed Sagittarius A*, lies about
27,000 light-years away, and has a mass about four million times that of our
Sun.
As the name implies, beyond a certain threshold point - the event
horizon - nothing can escape its pull, not even light itself.
But outside that regime is a swirling mass of material, not unlike
water circling a drain. In astronomical terms, it is a relatively quiet zone
about which little is known.
That looks set to change, though, as the gas cloud approaches.
Spaghetti tester
It does not comprise enough matter to hold itself together under its
own gravity, as a star might, so the cloud will begin to elongate as it meets
its doom.
"The idea of an astronaut close to a black hole being stretched
out to resemble spaghetti is familiar from science fiction," said lead
author of the study Stefan Gillessen, from Max Planck Institute for
Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany.
"But we can now see this happening for real to the newly
discovered cloud. It is not going to survive the experience."
It is likely that about half of the cloud will be swallowed up, with
the remainder flung back out into space.
But this violent process will literally shed light on the closest example
we have of an enigmatic celestial object.
The acceleration of the cloud's constituent material will create a
shower of X-rays that will help astronomers learn more about our local black
hole.
And as astronomer Mark Morris of the University of California
Los Angeles
2 comments:
The events "predicted" in this post would all have happened thousands of years ago. It is just that the light hasn't reached us yet to confirm the theory. Perhaps I'm being pedantic but to talk about them as if they are future events is a little inaccurate. If not poetic license maybe we should call it scientific license?
"An article in Nature suggests the spectacle should be visible in 2013." - At least someone writing this article believes the world will make it past the December 2012 end of the world talk.
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