01-11-2008 - Space

An enormous cloud of hydrogen gas in space threatens to crash into our Milky Way galaxy, astronomers announced at the 211th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

There’s no need to panic though, as the gas cloud is predicted to strike a spiral arm of the Milky Way 40,000 light years from Earth and in about 20 million years. For now, this discovery marks the first time a three-dimensional view of the gas cloud has ever been made as it moves through space.

“This cloud that we’re seeing today is a remnant of the formation of the Milky Way,” said Jay Lockman, leader of the science team that studied the gas cloud. Lockman is the principal scientist of the Greenbank Telescope at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in West Virginia. He said that billions of years ago, the Milky Way galaxy was probably formed when a lot of objects like this gas cloud, or even bigger objects, clumped together.

“And so, this object, this cloud, is kind of left-over debris from the construction of the Milky Way, in the same way that the comets and asteroids are leftover debris from the building of the solar system,” said Lockman to Earth & Sky.

The Greenbank Telescope collected over 40,000 measurements of radio waves streaming from the object, called Smith’s Cloud, which was first discovered by Gail Beeger Smith in 1963.

It measures 11,000 light-years long and 2,500 light-years wide, and it’s moving towards the Milky Way at a supersonic speed of 150 miles every second. With it comes the equivalent of one million suns worth of hydrogen gas into a region of space ripe with the formation of new stars. “And so that gas is going to shock the local gas,” said Lockman to Earth & Sky. The shock might trigger formation of a whole cluster of new stars.

What’s more, Lockman said that this far-off region in the Perseus spiral arm of the Milky Way might have habitable planets. “So people who were living in the area would probably see the event as a series of shocks in interstellar gas and then subsequently a lot of new, big stars forming. It would really light up the sky.” To the local denizens, it might look something akin to an aurora, said Lockman’s collaborator and co-panelist Robert A. Benjamin, of the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater.

Written by Jorge Salazar

7 Responses to “Giant gas cloud headed straight for our galaxy”

1. MIKE says:

   January 14, 2008 at 12:33 pm

   Great news for a Monday. Cheech…………..

   Reply
2. Tom Hughes says:

   January 20, 2008 at 6:19 am

   Im sure Mr.Felix would never see any of my commentary,but if he were to be listening,I would say,Mr. Felix,Mr. Felix, Stars are grown on purpose,planets are grown on purpose,suns are grown on purpose. Metals are all salts and are grown on purpose,comets are not dirty snowballs and are pieces of the crystalline core material from a long ago system explosion when a galaxy sector exploded.There was just no big bang and if you were a grid scientist such as I am,you would NEVER make such absurd statements that you just parrot your favorite guru as you boys have all been fed the biggest line of garbage we Earth Service personell have ever seen.Especially in this grid revv period you boys are calling global warming from carbon and we just roll our eyes.If you just understood your earth first,then you would understand all of the galaxies. Sad,Sad,Sad. Mr. Felix. Tom Hughes, Earth Scientist

   Reply
3. derrick johnson says:

   January 30, 2008 at 12:59 am

   reading about the giant gas cloud got me wondering is it possible for a star to form with in the giant gas cloud? if unable WHY?

   Reply
4. Green money says:

   February 23, 2008 at 6:35 am

   Yes,really usefull infomation for me .

   Reply
5. KRONUS says:

   September 10, 2009 at 7:29 am

   ONLY THOSE \”SCIENTISTS\” WITH A STATUS FETISH WOULD GET AWAY WITH STATING HYPOTHESIS AS FACTS, MOST CLAIMS WOULD NOT EVEN COME CLOSE TO SATISFYING THE RULES OF RATIONAL THINKING TO PROVE OR DISPROVE OR EVEN SATISFY PARTIALLY A THEORY OF SORTS.SO LETS CONTINUE TO POSTULATE AND STATE THINGS AS FACT BECAUSE OF WHO WE ARE.

   Reply
6. mina says:

   December 15, 2009 at 9:59 am

   How come this cloud has only length and width, but no height?
   Is it too thin in terms of light years?

   Reply
7. patrick says:

   December 22, 2009 at 12:29 pm

   What I don’t understand is how our galaxy can be colliding with anything…
   haven’t we been told that everything in the universe is rushing away from everything else? We’ve even been told that everything is accelerating away from everything else because of dark matter. So why do things still go ‘bump’ in the night?

   Reply