Stark said current models do not allow for a precise prediction of how much weight the black hole might gain.

"We're lucky that the energy from these jets is directed out away from the plane of the Milky Way," Stark said. "If it weren't, the Earth might be periodically sterilized of all life."

While the work by Stark and Martin predicts supernovae to come, separate research has allowed new insight into what happens to them after they explode.

Supernovae are the endpoints for stars that are more than 10 times as massive as our Sun. After using up their primary thermonuclear fuel in just 15 million years or less, the stars implode in about one second. Then they rebound, stall momentarilly, and explode.

Evidence has shown that the ensuing violent outburst sweeps up dust and debris like an interstellar snowplow. A sphere of gas and dust can reach more than 100 light-years into space.

After about 100,000 years, however, the expansion slows and the supernova remnants merge with their surroundings. This final stage is not well understood, in part because it is hard to observe it in the galaxy within which we sit.

So Rosa Murphy Williams, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Massachusetts and faculty member Q. Daniel Wang led a study using data from three space-based telescopes to examine supernova remnants in galaxies outside but close to the Milky Way.

"What seems to happen is that as the supernovae sweep up more material, that affects their aging process," Williams said.

Williams described the work as forensic science on dead stars in which the researchers look for "clues as to what happens when the body returns to the soil." She said the new study is just beginning to reveal how the elements from a supernovae explosion get mixed into space.

Humans might even get a close-up view of the fireworks, Stark suggests.

"We're talking about 200 million years in the future," he noted, "so it's possible some of our descendants would be at the galactic center when this happens."