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| Huge gas cloud will hit Milky Way |
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| Written by Egypt News | |
| Sunday, 13 January 2008 | |
 Astronomers have announced that a giant cloud of hydrogen gas is racing towards a collision with the Milky Way Smith Cloud, as it is known, may set off spectacular fireworks when it smacks into our galaxy in 20-40 million years. The experts said that it contains enough hydrogen to make a million stars like the Sun, and its leading edge is already hitting gas from our galaxy. When it does hit, the cloud could indeed set off a new burst of star formation in the Milky Way. Details of the work, by a team at the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, were unveiled at the 211th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas. Smith Cloud is named after the astronomer who discovered it in 1963. But until now, astronomers had no idea whether it was leaving the Milky Way or falling into it. The new work by a team using the Green Bank telescope in West Virginia to observe the object shows, unmistakably, that the latter is true. Their new measurements also show that the cloud is 11,000 light-years long and 2,500 light-years wide. The monster cosmic fog bank is careering towards our galaxy at more than 240km/s and is set to strike the Milky Way at an angle of 45 degrees. Broadly speaking, the cloud is currently rotating with our galaxy, but is also moving in towards it. Astronomers can see a wall of gas being ploughed up as Smith Cloud thuds into the outskirts of our galaxy atmosphere. The object, which lies at a distance of 40,000 light-years from Earth, would make an impressive sight if it could be seen with the naked eye, said lead author Dr Felix Lockman, from the NRAO. According to BBC News, Lockman said that we do not know quite where it came from yet, as its orbit is a little confused, but we can tell it is beginning to interact with the outskirts of the Milky Way, that it is suffering drag and that bits of it are falling off. But at the same time, it is feeling the gravitational pull of the Milky Way and is plunging in towards the disc. By the time it merges with our galaxy, Smith cloud will strike a region some distance from the location of our Solar System, about 90 degrees ahead of us in the disc of the Milky Way. Where it does collide, the cloud will generate shockwaves in the gas already residing in the Milky Way. Dr Lockman said it will be just like letting a bomb go off, adding that but you also create a lot of new gas which may have different properties to the existing gas. The shockwaves will set off a tremendous burst of star formation. These stars will be massive, rushing through their lives quickly and exploding as supernova. He declared that over a few million years, it will look like a celestial New Year celebration, with huge firecrackers going off in that region of the galaxy. Meanwhile, co-author Dr Robert Benjamin, from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, told BBC News that if the drag is sufficient, and the cloud fragments, there could be less of an effect. But at the moment, it looks like it is holding together quite tightly. Astronomers have previously surmised that a region of bright stars called Gould Belt, which lies close to our own Sun, could have been created in just this way. Dr Lockman said that this is the first time we're actually seeing it happen. The Milky Way is still under bombardment there are still fragments of it coming in and arriving on the scene. When this happens, it can bring fresh gas and trigger new star formation. And it is interesting to speculate whether this once happened near the Sun. The gas cloud was discovered in 1963 by the young American astronomer Gail Smith working at Leiden University in the Netherlands. She subsequently left science but still lives in the Netherlands.
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