MONSTROUS Gas Cloud on Way From Center of Milky Way

 

 

They really Do mean MONSTROUS.

 

This cloud is on its way to Earth RIGHT NOW.  It is 11,000 LIGHT YEARS long and 2000 light years across!

 

The cloud is called the Smith Cloud, and was discovered in the 1960s.  It was originally thought to be a failed galaxy, but now scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have found the chemical composition of the cloud point to it being ejected from the middle of the Milky Way some 70 million years ago.

 

It’s on the way right no and it is estimated that when it arrives, it will be responsible for the birth of over 2 million new suns.

 

BUT, no true doom pr0n here, folks.  It’s not going to actually be here fro another 20 million years or so.  At that rate, it will be likely we will have eradicated ourselves long before that time ever comes.

 

 

“The cloud is an example of how the galaxy is changing with time,” explained team leader Andrew Fox of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. “It’s telling us that the Milky Way is a bubbling, very active place where gas can be thrown out of one part of the disk and then return back down into another.”

“Our galaxy is recycling its gas through clouds, the Smith Cloud being one example, and will form stars in different places than before. Hubble’s measurements of the Smith Cloud are helping us to visualize how active the disks of galaxies are,” Fox said.

 

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2016/04/full/