Hydrogen Gas Clouds

I was searching for an article on how our Sun was created from a Hydrogen gas cloud for my Astronomy test tomorrow when I found another interesting article on Hydrogen gas clouds.  Frankly, my textbook is horrible and I have found that I have to do extended research if I want the specifics on any sort of Astronomical function.  I don't mind doing research to further educate myself but I do mind sinking a $100 in a fairly useless textbook.  In any case, I came across this article Massive Gas Cloud Speeding Toward Collision With Milky Way written by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.  I found it rather interesting and I wanted to archive it in my Blogger for further reference.  I think its phenomenal that we know things are going on like this in our universe.  Furthermore that we understand it and it is activity like this that has helped us to understand the birth of our Sun and other stars like it that occurred millions of years before we were here.

The cloud, called Smith's Cloud, after the astronomer who discovered it in 1963, contains enough hydrogen to make a million stars like the Sun. Eleven thousand light-years long and 2,500 light-years wide, it is only 8,000 light-years from our Galaxy's disk. It is careening toward our Galaxy at more than 150 miles per second, aimed to strike the Milky Way's disk at an angle of about 45 degrees.


An excerpt from the article:

"This is most likely a gas cloud left over from the formation of the Milky Way or gas stripped from a neighbor galaxy. When it hits, it could set off a tremendous burst of star formation. Many of those stars will be very massive, rushing through their lives quickly and exploding as supernovae. Over a few million years, it'll look like a celestial New Year's celebration, with huge firecrackers going off in that region of the Galaxy," Lockman said.