Social media exploded shouting “Galactus!” – the planet-consuming villain of Marvel Comics – on Monday when news spread of a heartbeat discovered in a mysterious cosmic gas cloud 15,000 light-years from Earth in the system designated S 433.
“The cloud – which is otherwise unremarkable – seems to ‘strike’ along with the rhythm of a neighboring black hole, researchers say. As such, they appear to be connected to each other, the researchers write in a new journal paper,” according to The Independent. “But it is not clear how the gamma-ray ‘heartbeat’ of the cloud can be connected to the black hole, which lies 100 light-years away.”
While the real science behind what may be causing the mysterious heartbeat is less fantastic than Galactus, that prevented Twitter from announcing that the cosmic Marvel supervillain was on its way to making 2020 even more of a terrible year.
Here are a smattering of “Galactus!” answers:
So is September 2020 Galactus https://t.co/Ta0LQvxrVK
– BossLogic (@Bosslogic) August 17, 2020
Great … not only is 2020 released #Galactus on us, but it’s the crappy movie cloud version … https://t.co/vx517FJZoo
– Nerd Truth (@NerdTruth) August 17, 2020
Why we live in the same at the same time as clay GALACTUS OF ALL GALACTUS https://t.co/y6jVHaGWkC
– Grace (@GracefuISpider) August 17, 2020
OH SWEET Galactus is coming! https://t.co/JXuruO5sOX
– Al Creed (@AlCreed) August 17, 2020
Although portrayed in Marvel Comics as an armored humanoid form of planet size, Galactus was shamefully portrayed as a sensitive cloud entity in the 2007 film Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.
See, it could always be less than Galactus. It could be Green Lantern’s giant diarrhea space cloud Parallax.
But, really, what’s the deal with that cloud? One theory about this “heartbeat” is that the rhythm is bound to material drawn through the black hole of the giant star revolving around it, matter shot out at high speed in two narrow jets.“Finding such an untimely connection via timing, about 100 light-years away from the micro-quasar, not even along the direction of the jets, is as unexpected as it is amazing,” said researcher Jian Li. “But how the black hole can support the heartbeat of the gas cloud is unclear to us.”
For more on the classic baddie, which ranks # 17 on the top 25 Marvel villains list, learn why Galactus should not be the MCU’s next big villain.
