Two giant gas bubbles - each one 25,000 light-years wide - discovered in our galaxy are baffling astronomers.
Posted on 11/11/2010 5:43:33 AM PST by Red Badger
The two vast structures, stretching to the north and to the south of the centre of the Milky Way, are so big that a beam of light, travelling at 186,282 miles per second, would take 50,000 years to get from the edge of one to the edge of the other.
The previously unseen bubbles were discovered by astronomer Doug Finkbeiner, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, using NASA's Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope. He admitted yesterday: "We don't fully understand their nature or origin."
They span more than half the visible sky, from the constellation of Virgo to the constellation of Grus, and are thought to be millions of years old. They were not noticed before because they were lost in a fog of gamma radiation across the sky.
Astronomers' best guess is that the bubbles were created by an eruption from a supersized black hole at the centre of our galaxy.
Mr Finkbeiner and his team discovered the bubbles by processing publicly available data from Fermi's Large Area Telescope. The space telescope, launched in 2008, is the most powerful detector of gamma rays, which are the most energetic form of light.
Scientist David Spergel, of Princeton University, New Jersey, said: "In other galaxies, we see that starbursts can drive enormous gas outflows.
Whatever the energy source behind these huge bubbles may be, it is connected to many deep questions in astrophysics."
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Two giant gas bubbles - each one 25,000 light-years wide - discovered in our galaxy are baffling astronomers.
beans and sauerkraut...
Mysterious gas bubbles...
then a mystery missile launch off California...
then Bristol continues to not be voted off DWTS....
hmmmm
“How ‘bout some more beans, Mr. Taggart?”
“I’d say you’ve had enough!”
hmmm indeed I see it too, very strange indeed. We need to examine Bush’s presidency some more.
This can’t be a good thing.
Another good reason to be creating black holes
on Earth?
These bubbles are 50,000 light years across, and no one’s seen them until now? This is series.
Jets from the event horizon do not explain the shape. Certainly, the matter composing the disk would account for the location of each sphere. What I do not see is how a sngular jet leads to lobes of equal size. Many jets, perhaps. Or an extermely energetic jet rotating around the event horizon surface at an extraordinarily high rate.
Also, the hourglass shape, if that is the case, is problematic. This woule require that the gamma rays must be so energetic that anihilation would cause the rays to diffuse thus the curve up and out at the center.
Gorgeous pictures
...Therefore, give me money.
The bubbles were blown out by galactic jets from our galaxy’s central black hole.
anihilation or scattering. Either way, jets do not explain the shape or the direction of the emanation from the event horizon.
It seems more like the sumermassive black hole rotates in the same direction as the galaxy and that it has poles that eject the gamma rays.
:)
“Gorgeous pictures”
Yeah...but I wonder how they got that camera so far out in space to take it?
FYI
Our galaxy’s central black hole must have sucked in a planet full of pinto beans and cabbage.......................
Who knew? — our galaxy has breasts
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