NASA | Fermi discovers giant gamma-ray bubbles in the Milky Way

Using data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, scientists have discovered a gigantic, mysterious structure in our galaxy. This never-before-seen feature looks like a pair of bubbles extending above and below our galaxy's center.

But these enormous gamma-ray emitting lobes aren't immediately visible in the Fermi all-sky map. By processing the data, a group of scientists was able to bring these unexpected structures into sharp relief.

Each lobe is 25,000 light-years tall and the whole structure may be only a few million years old. Within the bubbles, extremely energetic electrons are interacting with lower-energy light to create gamma rays, but right now, no one knows the source of these electrons.

Are the bubbles remnants of a massive burst of star formation? Leftovers from an eruption by the supermassive black hole at our galaxy's center? Or or did these forces work in tandem to produce them? Scientists aren't sure yet, but the more they learn about this amazing structure, the better we'll understand the Milky Way.

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Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• NASA
• Goddard
• Fermi
• gamma-ray
• space
• telescope
• Scott Wiessinger

[QukyZMN]

Lady Gaga got ~400mil views and this got ~6k :)

Dumb masses

[BonScottAC]

We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the giant gamma-ray bubbles.

[davidjasonhughes]

can the bubbles burst?

[fermi1234]

lol @ my name

[NickThomas1983]

Sometimes you focus too much on something specific and you forget to zoom out and contrast. All of this conspiracy talk is silly. If the Mayans or Greeks or predicted anything it was prediction based on observation. Nothing mystical about looking at the stars and predicting their movement. Great minds of those days were regarded as sages or demi-gods but that is relative to the common ignorance of the time. Which we are still held back by constantly. People trying to fit God into science.

[kurt2rsenjazz]

@QukyZMN your comment is both amusing and sad, because it's true :(

[lwvok]

@colesakick well you was doing well at one point telling people if they wanna live they have to pay rember telling people that one? or what about all the people that are alive next spring get 5.3 million or was that just bull shite

[lwvok]

@colesakick colleen fake thomas how much money have you scamed from the people today

[collenfraud2]

@colesakick People are tired of hearing you, what you say never happens, so STFO.

[Indigozek]

Scientist 1: Woah check out what I just discovered

Scientist 2: Whats that?

Scientist 1: How to change the contrast.

[LukeCoulson]

@85masso Dear Sir, I too am not a scientist. I remain comfortably sceptical about the big bang model. To feather the nest of my disbelief, the drapery hangs in Gravity as the Effect of the Long Wavelength Background Radiation in a Static Universe with a Compton Effect Cosmological Red Shift.The domain is bathed in a subtle luminescence of Cosmic Static at 144 meters wavelength. I see there that Olbers' paradox finds its level in the Endless Boundless stable universe thanks to Grote Reber.