Astronomers discover mysterious 500-light-year-wide 'cavity' in our Milky Way

[Judi Lynn]

By Samantha Mathewson about 10 hours ago

A supernova likely carved it out millions of years ago.



Astronomers have discovered a giant, spherical cavity within the Milky Way galaxy; its location is depicted on the right. A zoomed-in view of the cavity (left) shows the Perseus and Taurus molecular clouds in blue and red, respectively. Though they appear to sit within the cavity and touch, new 3D images of the clouds show they border the cavity and are quite a distance apart. (Image credit: Alyssa Goodman/Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian)

Astronomers have discovered an enormous cavity in the Milky Way galaxy that is believed to have formed after a stellar explosion millions of years ago.

The bubble-shaped void is 500 light-years wide and is located between star-forming regions in the Perseus and Taurus constellations, a new study reports.

The star-forming clusters of gas and dust, known as molecular clouds, are believed to have formed in tandem from the same supernova, or explosion of a star that has reached the end of its life, about 10 million years ago. The new finding may shed light on how supernovas generate star formation, study team members said.

"Hundreds of stars are forming or exist already at the surface of this giant bubble," study lead author Shmuel Bialy, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC) at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center For Astrophysics (CfA), said in a statement.

More:
https://www.space.com/mysterious-milky-way-cavity-discovered?utm_source=notification

[LittleGirl]

1. There's so much we don't know, nt

[KPN]

2. Mind boggling stuff!

[Pas-de-Calais]

3. Cool stuff! Read twice and still don't grasp it

[lastlib]

4. I'd like to see the dentist bill for THAT filling!

But, srsly, that's some awesome science going on.

[Javaman]

5. imagine that nova. Jeez.

Like if Stephenson Star went boom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephenson_2-18

[Pluvious]

6. Or...

It could be runaway Von Newman 'bots erecting Dyson Spheres
sweeping out in a growing outward wave of their local star systems.

Read: Pandora's Star by Peter Hamilton