Heartbeat Detected in Cosmic Gas Cloud Has Internet Convinced Galactus Is Coming

2020 has been a year filled with truly significant events, from an ongoing global pandemic to profound conversations about social justice and inequality to murder hornets. With a few months still left to go in the year, many have begun to joke about what other unexpected things 2020 could bring -- and a recent report from the cosmos definitely doesn't help. On Monday, an article from The Independent went viral, which reported that a "heartbeat" has been detected from a cosmic gas cloud about 15,000 light-years away from humans. The finding was discovered after researchers looked at a decade worth of data from NASA's Fermi gamma-ray space telescope, and found that the gas cloud seemed to be "beating" along with the rhythm from a nearby black hole.

"Finding such an unambiguous connection via timing, about 100 light-years away from the micro quasar, not even along the direction of the jets is as unexpected as amazing," researcher Jian Li says in a new report. "But how the black hole can power the gas cloud's heartbeat is unclear to us."

The news of a cosmic "heartbeat" being heard in space has elicited a lot of different responses online, with many assuming that it means some sort of extraterrestrial overlord could be on its way to Earth, subsequently making 2020 a lot more eventful. For Marvel fans, that conversation has taken an interesting direction, as many have joked that it signals the coming of Galactus, the cosmic comic villain best known for gobbling up planets. Here are some of our favorite tweets on the subject.