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What happened to that gas cloud that was to be swallowed at Milky Way center

NGC999888 · 2014-09-05 18:38:03

Heard loads about this for about a year. Then suddenly nothing.

05-09-2014 6:38pm

#1

NGC999888

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Heard loads about this for about a year. Then suddenly nothing.

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#2 08-09-2014 2:12am

ps200306

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I vaguely remember hearing it got swallowed. There were some animations of it getting stretched by tidal forces etc.

EDIT: Ok, scratch that. Here's the image I was thinking of, just showing different positions over a few years:

Image courtesy of S. Gillessen/ESO

I looked up Andrea Ghez, the lady who did the fifteen year study of the stars orbiting the Milky Way's supermassive black hole. She has a separate theory that the gas cloud contains a star, whose gravity would stop the cloud getting tidally distorted as quickly. So far she seems to be right.

Bottom line is it seems we're still waiting.

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