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Interstellar "tunnel" found that connects our solar system to other stars
12-18-2024
Interstellar "tunnel" found that connects our solar system to other stars
Eric Ralls
ByEric Ralls
Earth.com staff writer
Space can surprise even those who spend their lives studying it. People often think of our solar system as just a few planets and a bunch of empty space.
Yet new observations suggest we have been living inside a hot, less dense region, and that there may even be a strange cosmic channel connecting us to distant stars.
After years of careful mapping, a new analysis reveals what appears to be a channel of hot, low-density plasma stretching out from our solar system toward distant constellations.
Astronomers from the Max Planck Institute recently confirmed it using data from the eRosita instrument. Dr. L. L. Sala, lead researcher, and colleagues shared these findings in a paper published in the journal Astronomy &Astrophysics.
For a long time, scientists have known that our solar system sits within a peculiar region of space called the Local Hot Bubble.
This area, estimated to be about 300 light years across, formed as a result of powerful stellar explosions called supernovas.
They heated the surrounding gas, producing a low-density, high-temperature environment. Traces of these distant events still linger as wispy distributions of hot plasma.
“We find the temperature of the LHB exhibits a north-south dichotomy at high latitudes,” stated Dr. L. L. Sala, lead author of the study.
To better understand this environment, scientists turned to eRosita. This X-ray observatory, launched as part of the Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma mission, scoured the sky to capture soft X-ray emissions.
One of eRosita’s goals is to chart hot gas in space, learn about supernova remnants, and investigate the surroundings of our neighborhood.
By combining these results with older data from ROSAT, another X-ray survey, astronomers have pieced together a more detailed picture of our local region.
They took on the challenging task of dividing the sky into thousands of bins, extracting subtle signals of warm gas, dust cavities, and interstellar structures. This painstaking approach helped isolate the faint glow of the surrounding plasma
What stands out is the detection of a channel, or “tunnel,” that appears to stretch toward the Centaurus constellation.
What stands out is the detection of a channel, or “tunnel,” that appears to stretch toward the Centaurus constellation.
This feature seems to punch through the hot material, connecting our neighborhood to distant star systems.
Another such pathway appears to link toward the vicinity of Canis Major. Data hints these might be just one part of a larger, branching network of channels that run between star-forming regions and pockets of heated gas.
Each route may represent a kind of interstellar backroad, a path carved out by dynamic processes and influenced by the long-ago actions of exploding stars.
More in article
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Interstellar "tunnel" found that connects our solar system to other stars
12-18-2024
Interstellar "tunnel" found that connects our solar system to other stars
Eric Ralls
ByEric Ralls
Earth.com staff writer
Space can surprise even those who spend their lives studying it. People often think of our solar system as just a few planets and a bunch of empty space.
Yet new observations suggest we have been living inside a hot, less dense region, and that there may even be a strange cosmic channel connecting us to distant stars.
After years of careful mapping, a new analysis reveals what appears to be a channel of hot, low-density plasma stretching out from our solar system toward distant constellations.
Astronomers from the Max Planck Institute recently confirmed it using data from the eRosita instrument. Dr. L. L. Sala, lead researcher, and colleagues shared these findings in a paper published in the journal Astronomy &Astrophysics.
For a long time, scientists have known that our solar system sits within a peculiar region of space called the Local Hot Bubble.
This area, estimated to be about 300 light years across, formed as a result of powerful stellar explosions called supernovas.
They heated the surrounding gas, producing a low-density, high-temperature environment. Traces of these distant events still linger as wispy distributions of hot plasma.
“We find the temperature of the LHB exhibits a north-south dichotomy at high latitudes,” stated Dr. L. L. Sala, lead author of the study.
To better understand this environment, scientists turned to eRosita. This X-ray observatory, launched as part of the Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma mission, scoured the sky to capture soft X-ray emissions.
One of eRosita’s goals is to chart hot gas in space, learn about supernova remnants, and investigate the surroundings of our neighborhood.
By combining these results with older data from ROSAT, another X-ray survey, astronomers have pieced together a more detailed picture of our local region.
They took on the challenging task of dividing the sky into thousands of bins, extracting subtle signals of warm gas, dust cavities, and interstellar structures. This painstaking approach helped isolate the faint glow of the surrounding plasma
What stands out is the detection of a channel, or “tunnel,” that appears to stretch toward the Centaurus constellation.
What stands out is the detection of a channel, or “tunnel,” that appears to stretch toward the Centaurus constellation.
This feature seems to punch through the hot material, connecting our neighborhood to distant star systems.
Another such pathway appears to link toward the vicinity of Canis Major. Data hints these might be just one part of a larger, branching network of channels that run between star-forming regions and pockets of heated gas.
Each route may represent a kind of interstellar backroad, a path carved out by dynamic processes and influenced by the long-ago actions of exploding stars.
More in article
Interstellar "tunnel" found that connects our solar system to other stars
Astronomers found hidden cosmic channels connecting our solar system to distant stars, reshaping views of interstellar space.
