NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has revealed the existence of ahuge and hitherto unknown structure in the center of the Milky Way. They are two bubbles, each 25,000 light-years in diameter, stretching north and south of the galaxy.
The structure covers more than half of visible space, from the constellation Virgo to the constellation Crane. Although astronomers are still not sure of its origin, they suspect that it could be the remains of an eruption in an ancientsupermassive black holelocated in the middle of the Milky Way, as published today in the magazineAstrophysical Journal. Another possible explanation is that the bubbles were formed from the gas ofmassive star formation processesnear the galactic center several million years ago. In any case, the shape of the bubbles suggests that they were generated by a large amount of rapidly released energy.
“In other galaxies we have detected flares with gas outlets,” explained David Spergel, a scientist at Princeton University in New Jersey (USA) and co-author of the study. “Whatever the source of energy behind these huge bubbles is related to many unknowns in astrophysics,” he points out.
“Fermi scans the entire sky every three hours, and as the mission continues and our exposure deepens, we see the extreme Universe in progressively greater detail,” says Julie McEnery, researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. .
