The giant ball of air rushes into the Milky Way

A giant gas sphere called Smith's Cloud will collide with the Milky Way at speeds of up to 1.1 million km / h.

Scientists in the Hubble project of the US Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) predicted that Smith's cloud would crash into the outer ring of the Milky Way after 30 million years, Motherboard on 9 October reported.

First discovered by radio astronomer Gail Smith in 1963, the Smith Cloud is 11,000 light-years long and 2,500 light-years across, moving toward the Milky Way at 1,126,540 km / hour.

Simulation graphics Red Smith cloud hits the outer rim of the Milky Way after 30 million years.(Photo: NASA).

The team thinks that the object formed primarily from this hydrogen gas is pushed out of the Milky Way about 70 million years ago, when dinosaurs wandered on Earth. Conclusion is based on accurate observations from devices like the Hubble Space Telescope. Observations show that the cloud contains many traces of heavy metals such as sulfur gas with the same density as the dust disk on the outer ring of the Milky Way.

The Smith cloud is likely to originate from the Milky Way itself. However, researchers have not found a mechanism that causes the cloud to be thrown away from the orbit of the galaxy tens of millions of years ago. The cloud of Smith would probably bump into Perseus's twisted arm outside the galaxy, creating a brilliant firework display in the universe. Smith's cloud contains raw materials enough to produce two million new Sun-like stars after being absorbed by the Milky Way.

The energy explosion in star formation occurs thousands of light-years away from Earth, so it certainly does not endanger life on the planet . "The cloud is an example of how galaxies change over time. It tells us that the Milky Way is a very active place in which a gas ball can be thrown in this position of The disk of dust and re-entered, " said Andrew Fox, an astronomer working at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland, USA.