Cosmic Spaghetti: Watch a Giant Gas Cloud Get Stretched Trillions of Miles by Our Galaxy's Black Hole

Deep in the heart of our Milky Way galaxy, a cosmic drama of immense proportions is unfolding. An unseen monster, a supermassive black hole, is slowly and relentlessly tearing an object apart, stretching it like taffy. For the first time, scientists have a front-row seat to this extreme event, capturing two decades of images that reveal the raw, unforgiving power of gravity. At the center of this spectacle is a mysterious, thick cloud of gas and dust known as "X7," and it's on a collision course with destiny. Its dance partner is Sagittarius A* (pronounced "A-star"), the supermassive black hole that governs our galaxy. To understand the forces at play, consider this: if the entire planet Earth were crushed into a black hole, it would be less than an inch across. It is this incredible concentration of mass that gives black holes their almost unimaginable gravity a force that X7 is now experiencing firsthand. A Two-Decade Observation of Cosmic Destruction For 20 y...