Scientists revealed that a huge gas cloud is currently speeding toward the Milky Way at 700,000 mph. The cloud contains as much as a million suns and it's full of sulfur. It has a giant size, being over 2,500 light-years wide and over 11,000 light-years long.
Astronomers think that the gas cloud called the Smith Cloud has separated from our galaxy around 70 million years ago and now it is on a ballistic trajectory towards the Milky Way. The findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
It is known that galaxies like ours grow by "feeding" off of a cosmic supply of hydrogen gas. This way they come to form new stars. A galaxy is considering as dead or dying when the process of star formation begins to slow down or stop. The Smith Cloud is carrying with it enough helium and hydrogen gas to feed the Milky Way for the creating of 2 new million suns.
Kevin Schawinski from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology has been studying if our galaxy is in the midst of terminal decline by using the help of a crowd of volunteer citizen scientists on Galaxy Zoo. According to him, the results are still uncertain, but it is possible that our galaxy is already about to fall toward its inevitable end.
New hopes come when a team based at Notre Dame found that the Smith Cloud brings a big shipment of that galactic gas needed for continued growth via star formation. The Smith Cloud is known since the year 1963. However, only recent observation has suggested that the giant gas cloud is on a collision course with our galaxy.
At its current speed, the cloud will impact the disc of the galaxy in about 30 million years, according to Discovery News. It is likely that an explosion of star formation around the impact site will ignite due to the collision. Team leader Andrew Fox of the Space Telescope Science Institute explained in a NASA release that the giant gas cloud is an example of the way our galaxy is changing.
