It's known as the Snake, the nickname by which astronomers identify one dense, elongated filament in the center of our Milky Way galaxy. It apparently has suffered fractures in two places. As best as scientists can tell, a fast-rotating neutron star known as a pulsar collided with the Snake at a not-too-shabby 1–2 million miles per hour and caused a fracture that disrupted the Snake's magnetic field, releasing radio emissions from the site of the impact.
NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory and the MeerKAT radio array in South Africa studied the Snake, which is 230-light-years long, to get a better picture of what scientists compare to fractures in bones. Radio astronomers combined their findings with those of an observatory in San Agustin, Mexico and recently released a paper in the Monthly Notices of the London-based Royal Astronomical Society describing the event. Scientists study filaments such as the Snake to understand their roles in how stars are formed.
Whether the Snake can heal is another question altogether. Cosmic veterinarians don't make long-distance house calls.
Meanwhile, patient-privacy rules do not apply here - so you can see images of the injury on the CHANDRA X-Ray Observatory website. The link is in the text version of this week's newscast at arnewsline.org,