A mysterious object "left behind" in the center of the Milky Way. Scientists don't know what it is

Astronomers have peered into the center of the Milky Way and discovered what looks like a miniature spiral galaxy

revolving around one big star. In fact, it is just one big star.

It is located approximately 26,000 light years fromEarth, not far from the dense and dusty galactic center. It is about 32 times more massive than the Sun and lies within a huge disk of swirling gas known as the protostellar disk. Its width is about 4,000 astronomical units (that's 4,000 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun).

Such disks are widely distributed in the universe andserve as stellar fuel that helps young luminaries turn into large bright objects over millions of years. But astronomers have never seen anything like it before: a miniature galaxy orbiting perilously close to the center of another.

During the study, the researchers usedHigh-definition photographs taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile. It turned out that the spiral shape of the disk is given not by the form of movement, but by the interaction with some unknown, mysterious object the size of three Suns.

To test this hypothesis, the team calculateda dozen potential orbits of the mysterious object, and then ran simulations. The goal is to see if any of these could bring the object close enough to the protostellar disk to spin it in a spiral. Scientists have found that if an object followed one specific path, it could have slipped past the disk about 12,000 years ago. This disturbed the dust just enough to form the bright spiral shape seen today.

Read more

Quantum simulator showed the division of an electron into parts in one-dimensional space

Physicists have created an atomic laser that can work forever

Two planets found not far from Earth that are very similar to ours