Mysterious ‘snake-like’ structure is spotted at the heart of our galaxy

A mysterious ‘snake like’ structure near the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy is baffling astronomer.

The ‘filament’ is about 2.3 light years long and curves around to point at the supermassive black hole, called Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), located in the Galactic center.

A team of astronomers has now studied the strange structure – and produced the highest-quality image yet.

Mark Morris of the University of California, Los Angeles, who led the study, said, ‘With our improved image, we can now follow this filament much closer to the Galaxy’s central black hole, and it is now close enough to indicate to us that it must originate there.

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‘However, we still have more work to do to find out what the true nature of this filament is.

‘Part of the thrill of science is stumbling across a mystery that is not easy to solve,’” said co-author Jun-Hui Zhao of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

The researchers suggest several explanations: it could be a rotating ‘tower’ of magnetic field that approaches or even threads the event horizon, the point of no return for infalling matter.

Within this tower, particles would be sped up and produce radio emission as they spiral around magnetic field lines and stream away from the black hole.

Another, even stranger, possibility is that the filament is a cosmic string, theoretical, as-yet undetected objects that are long, extremely thin objects that carry mass and electric currents.

Previously, theorists had predicted that cosmic strings, if they exist, would migrate to the centers of galaxies.

If the string moves close enough to the central black hole it might be captured once a portion of the string crosses the event horizon.