A new model suggests that the solar system is surrounded by a gigantic magnetic tunnel visible only as radio waves.
Jennifer West of the Dunlap Institute at the University of Toronto is an expert in magnetism in galaxies and the interstellar medium, that is, the material that fills the space between stars. Now West and his team have developed a computer model that scientifically supports a magnetic tunnel that surrounds the Earth and the Sun.
According to the researchers, two known structures, “North Pole Spur” and the “Fan Region”, which have normally been studied as individual entities seen on opposite sides of Earth’s sky and were previously considered separate, are connected as a tunnel. They are two parts of a whole.
Astronomers have known about both structures since the 1960s, but most scientific explanations have focused on each of them, individually, and in fact still do. This study proposed something completely new.
“If we looked up at the sky, we would see this tunnel-like structure in almost every direction we look; that is, if we had eyes that could see the light from the radio ”, explains the expert.
The magnetic tunnel would be made of rope-shaped filaments and charged particles, would be 350 light years distant from Earth and would be approximately 1,000 light years long. The giant magnetic tunnel could be covering Earth, the Solar System, and nearby stars within the Milky Way.
Recreating the cosmic tunnel
To better understand the huge magnetic tunnel engulfing our solar system, West built a computer model calculating the differences in the radio sky if the long strings were at different positions in the night sky.
“This is extremely smart work,” explains Bryan Gaensler, a professor at the Dunlap Institute and a co-author of the study published in the Astrophysical Journal. “When Jennifer first proposed this to me, I thought it was too ‘out of place’ to be a possible explanation. But she was finally able to convince me. Now, I’m excited to see how the rest of the astronomical community reacts.”
In this way, West was able to see what the radio sky would look like through our telescopes, helping him match his model with real-world data.
The team plans to complete even more complex modeling in the future, hoping to discover and understand what role the magnetic tunnel plays in the galaxy. “Magnetic fields do not exist in isolation”, they explain. They all need to connect with each other . How is this connected to the galactic magnetic field? And with our Sun and Earth?
The researchers hope their latest discovery can help NASA and other space experts to figure out the evolution of magnetic fields in different galaxies.
Referencia: J. L. West et al, A Unified Model for the Fan Region and the North Polar Spur: A bundle of filaments in the Local Galaxy. arXiv:2109.14720v1 [astro-ph.GA], Astrophysical Journal. arxiv.org/abs/2109.14720
