Turns out it’s not just Superman who is flying faster than a speed ball.
Our Milky Way galaxy has jumped mysterious, cold gas clouds from the galactic center “like bullets”, according to a new study. What’s more, scientists are not sure how the gas was emitted in the first place.
The researchers say that the launch of gas could have consequences for the future of the Milky Way, because galaxy gas is needed to continue forming new stars.
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“Galaxies can be really good at shooting themselves in the foot,” said Naomi McClure-Griffiths, a galactic astronomer at the Australian National University in Canberra and co-author of a new study on the study, in a statement.
“If you expel a lot of mass, you lose some material that could be used to form stars, and if you lose enough of it, the galaxy can no longer form stars. So, to see hints of the Milky Way loses this. star-forming gas is kind of exciting – it makes you wonder what will happen next. “
Separate ongoing studies of the Milky Way show that we still have a lot to learn about the gas it produces and emits.
A 2019 effort using 10 years of data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows that the galaxy is becoming more gasier over time, for reasons that are poorly understood. A separate Hubble project launched in 2015, expanding public gas bubbles from the galactic center at 2 million mph (3.2 million km / h), represents the residual energy of a major event in the center long ago. And back in 2011, a study of the halo of gas around our Milky Way suggested that zone is the main source of fuel for star formation.
The new study not only highlights more questions about the Milky Way’s gas, but also what activities are at the center of our galaxy. Embedded in the heart of our galaxy is a supermassive black hole, but researchers are still not sure if the black hole blew the gas out of the center. An alternative explanation is that massive stars at the core of the galaxy ejected the gas with their collective gravity.
“We have observed that not only hot gas comes from the center of our galaxy, but also cold and very dense gas. This cold gas is much heavier, so moves less easily,” McClure-Griffiths said in the same statement.
The team said the activity could serve as an analogy for other galaxies that may have similar processes to move gas, especially since the Milky Way – our own galaxy – allows us to observe the gas movements up close.
“We do not know how the black hole as the star formation can produce this phenomenon. We are still looking for the smoking gun, but it gets more complicated the more we learn from it,” leads lead author Enrico Di Teodoro, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore , said in the same statement.
“This is the first time such a thing has been observed in our galaxy. We see this kind of process happening in other galaxies. But, with external galaxies you get much more massive black holes, star formation activity is higher [and] it makes it easier for the galaxy to disperse material. “
A study based on the study was published Wednesday, August 19, in the journal Nature.
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