At the heart of the Milky Way lies a supermassive black hole, named Sagittarius A*,around which there are some mysterious planets. Now a team of experts believe they may have discovered where one of those stars, S0-6, came from and they say it’s likely an alien.
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00:00 At the heart of the Milky Way lies a supermassive black hole named Sagittarius A, around which
00:09 there are some mysterious stars.
00:11 They're a bit of an enigma to astronomers, as our galactic center is believed to be too
00:15 chaotic for star formation.
00:17 Now a team of experts believe they may have discovered where one of those stars, named
00:21 S0-6, came from, and they say it's likely an alien.
00:25 Over the last eight years, a team from Miyagi University of Education in Japan have been
00:29 tracking the star, finding that not only is it accelerating, but it also orbits Sagittarius
00:34 A extremely closely, only 0.04 light years away.
00:38 During their observations, they were also able to determine S0-6's chemical composition
00:43 by the light wavelengths it releases, finding it's extremely vacant of heavy elements, meaning
00:48 it's likely 10 billion years old.
00:50 The amounts of those lighter elements are also more similar to those that exist in dwarf
00:54 galaxies, specifically those that orbit our own, meaning it's more than likely that while
00:58 the Milky Way was gobbling those smaller galaxies, one of those stars ended up getting drawn
01:02 into orbit around Sagittarius A, with the researchers now calling S0-6 an extragalactic
01:09 star.
01:09 [music]