There's a huge taffy spiraling across our galaxy. Ok, maybe it isn't candy, but astronomers have found a huge gas cloud being sucked into the massive Milky Way black hole and it sure looks like melted and stretched candy.
According to reports, a great cloud of gas is being pulled into the giant hole of death that is located at the center of the galaxy we call our home.
"These things happen once in a lifetime," astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in New Mexico, Dale Frail, told Christian Science Monitor.
The report noted that the gas cloud, now identified as "G2," is being sucked in at two different speeds by the black hole. Its front end is being pulled much faster than its tail end, making it stretch "thinner and thinner." This movement also makes G2 look like taffy or even spaghetti.
"The gas at the head of the cloud is now stretched over more than 160 billion kilometres around the closest point of the orbit to the black hole," explained Stefan Gillessen, who led the observing team of the G2, in a statement. "Like an unfortunate astronaut in a science fiction film, we see that the cloud is now being stretched so much that it resembles spaghetti."
However, according to NBC News, observers suggest that the candy-slash-spaghetti-like gas cloud will be "completely ripped apart" over the next year as it is stretched by the black hole's pull.
Astronomer Frail notes that this happening will give scientists and researchers a more conclusive idea of what really happens in a black hole.
"As the cloud plunges into a black hole, you're getting a beautiful opportunity to sample the environment near a black hole," Frail told the Christian Science Monitor.
Gillessen's statement also noted that "this intense observing campaign will provide a wealth of data, not only revealing more about the gas cloud, but also probing the regions close to the black hole that have not been previously studied and the effects of super-strong gravity."