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Turns out it’s not just Superman that flies faster than a fastball.
Our Milky Way galaxy has detonated mysterious clouds of cold gas from the galactic center “like bullets”, according to a new study. Plus, scientists don’t know how the gas was released in the first place.
Researchers say throwing in gas could have implications for the future of the Milky Way, as the galaxy needs gas to keep forming new stars.
Related: Stunning photos of our Milky Way galaxy
“Galaxies can be very good at shooting themselves in the foot,” said Naomi McClure-Griffiths, galactic astronomer at Australian National University of Canberra and co-author of a new research study, in a statement. .
“When you chase a lot of mass you lose some of the material that could be used to form stars, and if you lose enough, the galaxy cannot form any more stars. So to be able to see clues from the way milky losing that star-forming gas is pretty exciting – it makes you wonder what’s going to happen next. “
Separate ongoing studies of the Milky Way show that we still need to learn a lot about the gas it produces and expels.
A 2019 effort using 10 years of data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows that the galaxy is getting more and more gaseous over time, for reasons that are poorly understood. Another Hubble project published in 2015 revealed gas bubbles expanding from the galactic center at 3.2 million km / h, representing the residual energy of a large event in the center a long time ago. And in 2011, a study of the gas halo around our Milky Way Galaxy suggested the area may be the primary fuel source for star formation.
The new study not only raises more questions about the Milky Way’s gas, but also about the activities going on in the center of our galaxy. A supermassive black hole is embedded in the heart of our galaxy, but researchers do not yet know if the black hole has expelled gas from the center. Another explanation is that massive stars in the heart of the galaxy threw up the gas with their collective gravity.
“We observed that there is not only hot gas coming from the center of our galaxy, but also cold and very dense gas. This cold gas is much heavier, so it moves less easily,” said McClure. -Griffiths in the same release.
The team said the activity could serve as an analogue for other galaxies that might have similar processes to move around gas, especially since the Milky Way – being our own galaxy – allows us to observe gas movements up close.
“We don’t know how the black hole or star formation can produce this phenomenon. We’re still looking for the smoking gun, but it gets more complicated as we learn, ”senior author Enrico Di Teodoro, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said in the same statement.
“This is the first time that something like this has been observed in our galaxy. We are seeing this kind of process happening in other galaxies. But, with the outer galaxies, you get much more massive black holes, l star formation activity is higher. [and] this makes it easier for the galaxy to expel materials.
A research-based study was published Wednesday August 19 in the journal Nature.
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