Supermassive black hole is spewing planet size SPITBALLS headed toward Earth
Stars are being ripped apart and reformed into gas planets before being flung through the Milky Way in a game of cosmic terror tennis
THE massive black hole at the centre of our galaxy is firing gassy balls the size of "several Jupiters" at us.
The grim discovery follows a terrifying video that reveals how easily we could be yanked into oblivion by the cosmic whirlpool.
Supermassive black holes have a huge gravitational force which grabs nearby stars before tearing them apart and spewing them out a stream of gas.
That gas clumps together to form planet-sized objects that are flung around the galaxy in a game of "cosmic pinball", scientists have revealed.
Eden Girma, an undergraduate student at Harvard University said: "A single shredded star can form hundreds of these planet-mass objects.
"We wondered: Where do they end up?
"How close do they come to us?
"We developed a computer code to answer those questions."
Related stories
Her calculations found that the planets - which weigh the same as Neptune - frequently come within a few hundred light-years of Earth and could be spotted by telescope.
But these new formations aren't to be confused with newly formed planets.
It takes just one day for our closest black hole - Sagittarius A - to tear the star apart and about a year for its pieces to pull themselves back together.
"This is in contrast to the millions of years required to create a planet like Jupiter from scratch," Girma said.
These "spitballs" travel at speeds of about 20 million mph and would take a million years to reach Earth after being shot from a black hole.
Luckily for us, most will shoot straight for the exit, leaving our galaxy entirely.
The researchers estimated that almost 95 percent will be propelled to other galaxies, where similar tidal-disruption processes are happening right now.
"Other galaxies, like Andromeda, are shooting these 'spitballs' at us all the time," astrophysicist James Guillochon said.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368