It shouldn't have been possible but a small, young star survived being destroyed by the supermassive Milky Way black hole.
Scientists say this incredible episode occurred between the star identified as "G2" and the huge black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. This black hole has a name, by the way. Scientists call it Sagittarius A*, pronounced "Sagittarius A-star".
New research by a group of scientists at the University of Cologne in Germany said their most recent data shows G2 remained compact, or "uneaten" after its closest approach to Sagittarius A*.
G2 wasn't stretched thin or torn apart by the black hole's unimaginably powerful gravitational force, said the researchers.
"For us, everything points at it being a young star," said Andreas Eckart, a co-author on the new paper.
"We don't see any stretching of the cloud that was claimed previously. We get a much more coherent picture of a single object (a star)."
Previous to this new study, some scientists believed G2 to be a star while others said it was a gas cloud. That G2 survived its close encounter with Sagittarius A* means it's likely a star.
Eckart and colleagues said their data shows G2 has passed its point of closest approach to Sagittarius A*. They believe the star came to within 25 billion miles of the black hole's event horizon, considered the point of no return for objects that come close to a black hole.
If it hadn't survived the encounter, a flare of energy coming from the black hole would have been detected as it destroyed the star. No such flare was detected by scientists.
The encounter with the black hole also gave G2 a speed boost. It's now moving away from Earth at 12 million km/h compared to its speed of 10 million km/h when it approached Sagittarius A*, said Astronomy.com.
That last in a series of pictures taken over a period of years is undeniable proof G2 somehow escaped destruction by Sagittarius A*.
Not only did G2 survive, it got a nice boost in speed and is now moving away from the black hole at 7.5 million miles per hour, 1.5 million miles per hour faster than when it was approaching. The change in the gas cloud's direction was a clear sign G2 had swung around the black hole.
"It was amazing to see that the glow from the dusty cloud stayed compact before and after the close approach to the black hole," said Monica Valencia-S., a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Cologne and co-author of the paper.