An artist’s impression of the Smith Cloud approaching our
Milky Way Galaxy. Image credit: Bill Saxton / NRAO / AUI / NSF.
A giant gas cloud is headed straight for the Milky Way Galaxy, but it has a deep-seeded magnetic force field that will likely soften its blow, giving scientists insight to such events.
Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) and Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) said the force field discovery may explain how a high velocity cloud (HVC) can seamlessly merge with a galaxy.
The Smith Cloud is traveling at a rate of 150 miles per second and will hit out Galaxy disk in 30 million years. The inevitable collision, astronomers believe, will fuel the galaxy and set of a spectacle of star formations.
The gas clouds that slam into galaxy disks may be massive, but their gas makeup is soft and weak and could not survive such an impact on its own. Such clouds seemingly wander aimlessly around space, leading scientists to believe they are leftovers from other galaxy's formations.
"Our Galaxy is in an incredibly dynamic environment," said Hill, "and how it interacts with that environment determines whether stars like the Sun will continue to form."
