00:00The Milky Way has a decidedly fewer number of red giant stars than expected, and for years it's left astronomers wondering why exactly that is.
00:11But now researchers from the Polish Academy of Sciences believe they may have the answer.
00:15In a paper recently published in the Astrophysical Journal, they have outlined how Sagittarius A star, or the galactic center of the Milky Way where a supermassive black hole resides, may be the reason for those missing giant reds.
00:26The scientists outline how Sagittarius A star may have produced an immense stream of gas that pulled the outer layer from the red giants when it was born.
00:33So, how do they know?
00:34Well, the Milky Way has two extremely large bubbles that give off gamma rays both above and below the galaxy's central plane.
00:40This means that about four million years ago when the black hole came to be, something very large was gobbled up by it.
00:45At that time, it would have emitted an energetic stream of gas, powerful enough to superheat the outer layers of the red giants as they pass through the jet thousands of times during orbit,
