Astronomers have been tracking a mysterious object near the center of the galaxy for decades, and now a new study has shed light on its identity and future fate as it will likely be engulfed by a supermassive black hole lurking in lurking in the coming years. There. The center of the Milky Way is the most extreme medium in the galaxy. This is because it is home to Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), a supermassive black hole containing about four million Solar masses. This creates a large gravitational effect on stars and other objects in this region.

One such object is known as X7, which is estimated to have around 50 Earth masses and is in the roughly 170-year orbit of Sgr A*. Despite being watched for decades, astronomers weren’t entirely sure what X7 really was, so a team from the UCLA Galactic Center Group and Keck Observatory set out to find it for a new study.

Astronomers analyzed 20 years of data from the X7 and found that time stretches, so it’s now quite long. It’s also accelerating so it’s now going at about 700 miles (1,127 km) per second.

“No other object in this region has shown such extreme evolution,” said Anna Čurlo, lead author of the study. “It was originally comet-shaped, and people thought it might have gotten that shape from the stellar wind or particle jets from the black hole. But after 20 years of following it, we found it to be even longer. Something must have set this cloud in a certain way in its unique way.”

While all objects in this space tend to be stretched by intense gravity, the X7 underwent a much more dramatic shape change than the others. And that may be the key to understanding his identity.

Another class of objects, called G objects, also looks like dust clouds, but lost less mass than expected when passed by Sgr A* in 2014, suggesting that its core is denser. indicates that there may be a new class of objects that is just dust holding it. The team suggests that this cloud of matter may have sprung up after the two stars collided.

So we know its recent history, so what’s next for the X7? According to the orbiter team’s calculations, X7 will make its closest approach to the supermassive black hole around 2036 and is unlikely to survive the encounter. After a short while, he would never return.

“We hope that the strong tidal forces exerted by the galactic black hole will eventually tear X7 apart before it even completes an orbit,” said Mark Morris, co-author of the study.