The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way is known as Sagittarius A* (pronounced "Sagittarius A-star" and known as Sgr A*). It is 4 million times as massive as the sun and visible only by its effects on the surrounding stars.
In 2011, Gillessen and a team of astronomers found that a small gas cloud with a mass roughly three times that of Earth is on a collision course with the black hole in the Milky Way's core. Scientists quickly determined that the cloud would begin to interact with Sgr A* around the end of March 2014 — one month ago — and have been monitoring it continuously in various wavelengths.
Scientists around the world are now tracking this doomed cloud of gas as it makes a daring approach toward the monster black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, a cosmic encounter that might reveal new secrets on how such supermassive black holes evolve.
The G2 space cloud, and its ultimate death by black hole, have been under close scrutiny since the cloud's fate was first identified in 2011. Now, the cloud is destined to be shredded by a super-massive black hole.
For scientists Stefan Gillessen and Daryl Haggard, the excitement is mounting over the impending death of G2.
"We get to watch it unfolding in a human lifetime, which is very unusual and very exciting," said Haggard, a researcher at Northwestern University in Illinois, during a presentation this month at the American Physical Society in Savannah, Georgia. Gillessen is a researcher with the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany.
Already, parts of the cloud have begun to shift. Turbulence and the tidal forces of the black hole combine to mix up the gas cloud as it approaches the black hole.
"It looks like a drop of milk in your morning coffee," Gillessen added.
The front of the cloud has begun to move faster than the back as gravity affects the region closer to the black hole. Gillessen compared it to a train whose back was moving slower than the front—"not very healthy," he said.
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