Astronomers Discover a Bizarre Spiral Object Swirling Around The Milky Way's Center

Astronomers peered into the center of the Milky Way and found a small spiral galaxy around a large star.

The star is about 32 times the size of the sun and sits within a disk of gas called a "protostellar disk". 4,000 times the distance between Earth and the Sun is measured by the disk.

Young stars grow into big, bright suns as a result of the stellar fuel served by such disks.

Astronomers have never seen one like this before, a tiny, perilously close to the center of our own galaxy.

Are there more mini-spirals out there?

According to a new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, there is an object that is three times the size of the sun.

The disk doesn't seem to be moving in a way that would give it a natural spiral shape according to the researchers.

(SHAO)

There is a schematic view of the accretion disk. snapshots from a numerical simulation show the system at the time of the flyby event, 4,000 years later, and 8000 years after the event. The disk with spirals and two objects around it was captured from ALMA observations.

They wrote that the disk seems to have been stirred up by a close encounter with another body.

The team ran a simulation to see if any of the 12 potential orbits could have brought the object close to the disk.

The object could have skimmed past the disk about 12,000 years ago if it followed a specific path.

The spiral arms in the disk are relics of the flyby of the object that the study was about.

The study shows that external objects can whip stellar disks into spiral shapes that are only seen on the galactic scale.

It's likely that near-miss events like this happen frequently in the center of the Milky Way because it's so dense with stars.

Our galaxy's center may be full of small spirals only to be discovered. The center of the doll may not be reached by scientists for a long time.

There are related stories.

There are 15 weird galaxies in our world.

There are 12 strange objects in the universe.

There are a lot of ideas about black holes.

The original article was published by Live Science. The original article can be found here.