4 ms·
I'm curious - is this star likely to be "eaten" in the near future, and when something like that happens, could it potentially create a dangerous gamma ray burs
by perl4ever 6y ago
I'm curious - is this star likely to be "eaten" in the near future, and when something like that happens, could it potentially create a dangerous gamma ray burst or something?
I think I've read something about how the Milky Way's central black hole is unusually quiet, and speculation whether that was a prerequisite for life to develop.
- networkimprov 6y agoI gather you're asking about the possibility of a "local" Quasar event -- formation of a large accretion disk around SgrA*. Not the near future, no. Gravitational radiation is probably the only factor eroding its orbit, and it's a very small factor indeed. You might see a merger between Andromeda & the Milky Way first!
- pdonis 6y ago> is this star likely to be "eaten" in the near future It wouldn't seem so. The distance of closest approach to the hole is still 215 times the hole's horizon radius. The star's orbit will, over a very long period, decay due to emission of gravitational waves, so eventually it will fall into the hole, but not any time soon.
- perl4ever 6y agoWell, sure, if you consider just the two objects, but I would think the neighborhood is dense enough that statistically something else might have a close encounter and change the orbit.
- spuz 6y agoProbably not. The star passes closer to Sgr A* than any other at 16 AU - about the distance between the Sun and Uranus - but that still puts it a long way from the black hole's event horizon. Despite its huge mass, Sgr A*'s Schwarzchild radius is only 0.08 AU. Still in the long-term, yes it probably will be eaten up. After all the galaxy's black hole must have fed on stars in order to reach the huge mass that it has now. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S62_(star) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S62_(star)