In this X-ray view of the entire sky, giant bubbles are clearly visible extending above and below the plane of the Milky Way galaxy. The bubbles likely come from the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center.
Posted on 01/07/2021 12:26:06 PM PST by MtnClimber
For decades, astronomers debated whether a particular smudge was close-by and small, or distant and huge. A new X-ray map supports the massive option.
hen Peter Predehl, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany, first laid eyes on the new map of the universe’s hottest objects, he immediately recognized the aftermath of a galactic catastrophe. A bright yellow cloud billowed tens of thousands of light-years upward from the Milky Way’s flat disk, with a fainter twin reflected below.
The structure was so obvious that it barely seemed necessary to describe it in writing. But “Nature wouldn’t accept [us] simply sending a picture and saying, ‘OK, we can see this,’” Predehl said. “Therefore, we did some analysis.”
The results, which Nature published on December 9, have moved a decades-old idea from the fringe into the mainstream.
In the 1950s, astronomers first spotted a radio wave-emitting arc hanging above — or to the “north” of — the galactic plane. In the decades since, the “North Polar Spur” has become something of a celestial Rorschach test. Some see the scattered innards of an ex-star that’s relatively close by. Others see evidence of a grander explosion.
The controversy hinges on every astronomer’s major headache: Peering out into space, researchers have no depth perception. “We see a 2D map of a 3D universe,” said Kaustav Das, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology.
For decades, most astronomers believed that the North Polar Spur was part of the local galactic neighborhood. Some studies concluded that it connects to nearby gas clouds. Others looked at its distortion of background stars and inferred that it’s a supernova remnant — a dusty cloud marking the gravestone of a dead star.
Yet Yoshiaki Sofue, an astronomer at the University of Tokyo, has always
(Excerpt) Read more at quantamagazine.org ...
In this X-ray view of the entire sky, giant bubbles are clearly visible extending above and below the plane of the Milky Way galaxy. The bubbles likely come from the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center.
I see Donald Trump’s head bowed..............................
Outstanding
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