An elongated object near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, known only as ‘X7,’ has piqued the curiosity of scientists for 20 years. A new study offers a potential explanation.
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00:00An object with a mass of about 50 Earths, known only as X7, is slowly being stretched
00:10and pulled into the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
00:15Since it was first discovered 20 years ago, scientists have wondered about its origins.
00:21After studying its extreme evolution compared to other nearby objects across that time period,
00:27researchers from the UCLA Galactic Center Group and Hawaii's Keck Observatory believe
00:32it could be a cloud of dust and gas left over from a collision between two stars.
00:38As the study's lead author Anna Kierlow contends, per a report from UCLA,
00:57it started off comet-shaped, and people thought maybe it got that shape from stellar winds
01:07or jets of particles from the black hole.
01:10But as we followed it for 20 years, we saw it becoming more elongated.
01:15Something must have put this cloud on its particular path with its particular orientation.
01:20The object is currently on an orbital path around the black hole, known as Sagittarius
01:25A, that would take 170 years to complete.
01:29But based on its trajectory, the researchers predict the black hole's strong tidal forces
01:34will eventually tear it apart before then.
01:37In the meantime, it's clocking speeds of around 700 miles per second as it closes in
01:42on its final destination, Science Daily reports.
01:46The team's findings were published in the Astrophysical Journal.