Core Research Station

Core Research Station

aka Galactic Bar Station, Center View

Only 1 light year  from the actual astrographical center of the Milky Way galaxy. At extreme radiation conditions is a large heavy shielded research station of the United Stars (Union ) It begun as small base on planet Ugshys (System Argughys ), placed there by the Wurgus, before Union Membership. It was expanded to a large research facility.

Today the CRS  is a large custom built space station operated by the Science Corps and under the auspice of the Science council. One unique aspect of the station that it is a very popular tourist destination for weddings. It also attracts a large number of Narth.

The main task of the station is the observation of the supermassive black hole, radiation and gravitation conditions, research on Sagittarius A* . Supernova  research (the main reason the Wurgus established the original base).

Only recently contact was made with the Sprytes, a sentient life form occupying a planet within the "Ring of Stars "

The CRS is a custom built Gigamon II class space station (36 km diameter).

There is a Station Commandant (Science Council picked). Secuirity is provided by Union Police and the Expeditionary Marine Corps. Approximatley 5 million inhabitants and between 1-2 million visitors annually. While residents must be Union, The Science Council occationally invites Non Union scientists from other civilizations.

There is a "Station City ", shops, parks, recreation facillities. Auxillary labs and facilities of a number of Union Universities and research institutes.

[Note 1]

At first glance, the center of the Milky Way seems like a very inhospitable place to try to form a planet. Stars crowd each other as they whiz through space like cars on a rush-hour freeway. Supernova explosions blast out shock waves and bathe the region in intense radiation. Powerful gravitational forces from a supermassive black hole twist and warp the fabric of space itself.

Yet new research by astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics shows that planets still can form in this cosmic maelstrom. For proof, they point to the recent discovery of a cloud of hydrogen and helium plunging toward the galactic center. They argue that this cloud represents the shredded remains of a planet-forming disk orbiting an unseen star.

"This unfortunate star got tossed toward the central black hole. Now it's on the ride of its life, and while it will survive the encounter, its protoplanetary disk won't be so lucky," said lead author Ruth Murray-Clay of the CfA. The results are appearing in the journal Nature Communications.

The cloud in question was discovered last year by a team of astronomers using the Very Large Telescope in Chile. They speculated that it formed when gas streaming from two nearby stars collided, like windblown sand gathering into a dune.

Murray-Clay and co-author Avi Loeb propose a different explanation. Newborn stars retain a surrounding disk of gas and dust for millions of years. If one such star dived toward our galaxy's central black hole, radiation and gravitational tides would rip apart its disk in a matter of years.

They also identify the likely source of the stray star - a ring of stars known to orbit the galactic center at a distance of about one-tenth of a light-year. Astronomers have detected dozens of young, bright O-type stars in this ring, which suggests that hundreds of fainter Sun-like stars also exist there. Interactions between the stars could fling one inward along with its accompanying disk.

Although this protoplanetary disk is being destroyed, the stars that remain in the ring can hold onto their disks. Therefore, they may form planets despite their hostile surroundings.

As the star continues its plunge over the next year, more and more of the disk's outer material will be torn away, leaving only a dense core. The stripped gas will swirl down into the maw of the black hole. Friction will heat it to high enough temperatures that it will glow in X-rays.

"It's fascinating to think about planets forming so close to a black hole," said Loeb. "If our civilization inhabited such a planet, we could have tested Einstein's theory of gravity much better, and we could have harvested clean energy from throwing our waste into the black hole."

Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. CfA scientists, organized into six research divisions, study the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the universe.

[Note 2]  The central parsec around Sagittarius A* contains thousands of stars. Although most of them are old red main-sequence stars, the Galactic Center is also rich in massive stars. More than 100 OB and Wolf–Rayet stars have been identified there so far. They seem to have all been formed in a single star formation event a few million years ago. The existence of these relatively young stars was a surprise to experts, who expected the tidal forces from the central black hole to prevent their formation. This paradox of youth is even stronger for stars that are on very tight orbits around Sagittarius A*, such as S2 and S0-102. The scenarios invoked to explain this formation involve either star formation in a massive star cluster offset from the Galactic Center that would have migrated to its current location once formed, or star formation within a massive, compact gas accretion disk around the central black-hole. Most of these 100 young, massive stars seem to be concentrated within one or two disks, rather than randomly distributed within the central parsec. This observation however does not allow definite conclusions to be drawn at this point.