Doomed gas cloud being sucked ‘like spaghetti’ into black hole (VIDEO)

GlobalPost

A black hole is slowly sucking in a gigantic gas cloud by stretching it into noodles that look "like spaghetti," according to BBC News.

It may sound delectable, but it's deadly. The G2 gas cloud is not expected to survive its encounter with the huge black hole that lies at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy. 

“Like an unfortunate astronaut in a science fiction film, we see that the cloud is now being stretched so much that it resembles spaghetti,” said Stefan Gillessen of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, which has been following the fate of the gas cloud, reported Britain's Independent.

The cloud was first detected en route to the black hole in 2011, and scientists have been tracking it in order to learn more about the nature of black holes. Their most recent research on G2 was published in the Astrophysical Journal in June, read it here

Scientists are unsure how the mega-gas cloud was formed, but the BBC said various theories have been proposed. 

"At the moment we think that the gas probably came from the stars we see orbiting the black hole," Gillessen said on Wednesday, according to the Independent

NBC News said the recent observations have also allowed scientists to rule out other possibilities. 

Whatever its origins, the cloud is expected to be dismembered by the black hole. The closest noodle-part is currently about 15 billion miles away from the black hole, which in space terms, as Gillessen put it, means it is "barely escaping falling right in," said NBC.

Learn more about spaghettification in space in this video from SPACE: 

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