The Black Hole at the Center of the Galaxy Is Forging a Strange New Kind of Star

By Brandon Specktor - Senior Writer 3 days ago

The black hole at the center of our galaxy is warping and combining stars into a strange new kind of object, astronomers say.



This illustration shows the six strange objects (dubbed G1 through G6) that astronomers detected swirling around our galaxy's central black hole. The mysterious blobs orbit the hole every 100 to 1,000 years, stretching out as they approach.
(Image: © Anna Ciurlo, Tuan Do/UCLA Galactic Center Group)

Like most large galaxies, the Milky Way is glued together by a supermassive black hole at its center, buried deep in the constellation Sagittarius. Our galaxy's supermassive black hole, called Sagittarius A* (or Sgr A*), constantly pulls stars, dust and other matter inward, forming a stellar megalopolis 1 billion times denser than our corner of the galaxy.

Sometimes, stars closest to the black hole have to compete for space — and sometimes, a new study suggests, this competition becomes a strange and violent marriage.

In the new study, published today (Jan. 15) in the journal Nature, astronomers describe six mysterious objects swirling around our galaxy's central black hole. According to the authors, these anomalous objects (dubbed G1 through G6) look like oblong blobs of gas several times more massive than Earth. However, they behave like small stars capable of passing perilously close to the black hole’s edge without being ripped to shreds.

Are these peculiar space burps just gas, or are they stars? According to the study authors, the blobs may be a strange hybrid of both. Based on the six objects' shapes, orbits and interactions with Sgr A*, the researchers suggest that each G object is a pair of binary stars (two stars that revolve around each other) that got smashed together by the black hole's gravity millions of years ago and is still spilling out clouds of gas and dust in the messy aftermath of the collision.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/milky-way-black-hole-merges-binary-stars.html