Mysterious “spiral object” swirling around the center of the Milky Way and it surprises scientists

A STRANGE spiral object has been discovered by researchers – and it holds a hidden secret.

Scientists have spotted what appears to be a miniature spiral galaxy near the center of our Milky Way, according to a new study.

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The spiral, on the other hand, consists of gas and dust and revolves around a single large star.

About 26,000 light-years from Earth, this star is massive – about 32 times the size of our solar system’s sun.

It also sits in a larger disk of swirling gas known as the “protostellar disk.”

There are thousands of these disks throughout the universe as they help “feed” young stars so they can develop into large suns.

A unique find

Researchers discovered this mysterious spiral via the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile.

It’s considered a “unique” discovery because astronomers have never observed a disk like this one before – a disk resembling a miniature galaxy and perilously close to the center of our galaxy.

The team of scientists also found that the disk does not appear to be moving in a manner consistent with other known spiral objects.

Instead, it appears that the object was formed by a near collision with another body.

To test their theory, the researchers examined dozens of possible orbits for the strange object.

And then they ran a simulation to see if either of them could create the spiral shape.

After their assessments, the researchers concluded that external objects could potentially blow stellar disks into spiral shapes.

“The good agreement between analytical calculations, numerical simulation, and ALMA observations provides robust evidence that the spiral arms in the disk are relics of the intruder’s flyby,” says co-author Lu Xing, an associate researcher from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said in a statement.

In essence, the results show that hard drives are subject to processes such as flybys early in their development.

And these processes can immensely influence the formation of stars and planets.