Right now, in the center of our galaxy, an enormous black hole is stretching an object apart like it were taffy.
And scientists currently have a rare view, and images, of this extreme cosmic event playing out.
A thick cloud of gas and dust dubbed "X7" is rapidly approaching the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. Black holes harbor almost unimaginable gravity due to their extremely concentrated mass (if Earth were crushed into a black hole, it would be under an inch across), and astronomers have now watched X7 changing for two decades as it veers closer to its last years. The latest observations, published in The Astrophysical Journal(opens in a new tab), reveal that X7 has been stretched trillions of miles. It's now 3,000 astronomical units in length. An astronomical unit is 93 million miles, or the distance between the sun and Earth.
X7 doesn't have much time left. The black hole's gravitational power is relentless.
