Our home galaxy is only the first frontier of space exploration. It may sound trivial, but the more scientists learn about it, the more amazing this system becomes. It contains dark matter, strange signals, and many other phenomena and phenomena discovered for the first time. And although most of the new discoveries become examples for solving old scientific questions, some of them can tell us about completely new phenomena that we did not know about and did not even guess.
Today we will talk about the "ten" of the most interesting and amazing wonders discovered inside the Milky Way.
Apop
In 2018, astronomers announced the presence of a unique system in our galaxy. It is located in the constellation Nagon and is a triple star system consisting of two Wolf-Rayet stars and a supergiant. The scientific name is 2XMM J160050.7-514245. For simplicity they called her Apop. The name comes from the name of a deity from Egyptian mythology - a huge serpent, personifying evil and Chaos, the eternal enemy of the sun god Ra. What makes it unique is what, according to our theories, should happen after its stellar collapse.
When Wolf-Rayet stars die, they go supernovae and create very powerful gamma-ray bursts. The latter is the most powerful phenomenon of the radiation of energetically charged particles in the known universe and has never been observed inside the Milky Way before. Such outbursts are very rare, but Apop is showing great promise.
Visually, Apop is defined as two stars, but the lower, larger star is actually a Wolf-Rayet double star, made up of two stars very close to each other. The third star revolves around a binary star at a distance of about 1700 astronomical units (250 billion km) with an orbital period exceeding 10 thousand years. The system is surrounded by clouds of stellar wind and cosmic dust. The wind speed here reaches 12,000,000 km / h, and the rotation speed of cosmic dust is 2,000,000 km / h.
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Fast spinning Wolf - Rayet stars could theoretically generate a gamma ray burst in a supernova explosion. The star system 2XMM J160050.7-514245 fits this description and can generate the ejection of two gamma jets from its poles. The potential gamma-ray burst from this system is not dangerous for life on Earth, since the angle of deviation of the axis of rotation of the star system with respect to the Earth is about 30 degrees. But the sight will be unforgettable.
Goblin
Another treasure that astronomers are chasing after is the so-called "Ninth Planet". It is very large and may be located somewhere outside the solar system. At least according to the assumptions. Nevertheless, scientists have discovered signs that may indicate the existence of this world.
In 2018, astronomers discovered that a Trans-Neptunian object in the outer solar system was being subjected to a very strange gravitational force from an unknown source. This source, scientists believe, may be the "Ninth Planet". Since the discovery took place shortly before Halloween, and the initial designation of the object contained the letters "TG", the scientists named the object "The Goblin".
Apart from the interesting name and allusions to the "Ninth Planet", the object itself is of great interest. Its orbit around the Sun is especially interesting. She is very elongated. According to the calculations of scientists, it takes the Goblin about 40,000 years to complete a revolution around our star. Since the object is located at the farthest reaches of the solar system, we can only see 1 percent of its total orbit.
The discovery of the object allows us to replenish the baggage of knowledge about the external boundaries of our system. The goblin is only the third known object, after Sedna and 2012 VP113, to inhabit the area. And the last two, like the Goblin, are also under the influence of some powerful source of gravity. Probably the very "Ninth Planet".
Dark Matter Hurricane
In 2017, scientists discovered that something large was heading towards our planet. Further analysis of the data showed that we are not talking about an asteroid. We are talking about a much larger object. More precisely, the whole phenomenon. As it turned out, scientists saw what looked like a ribbon of stars rushing through the region of the Milky Way, in which our solar system is located.
Dubbed the "S1 stream," the stream is the remnants of a dwarf galaxy torn to shreds by the Milky Way. It is not dangerous for us, but scientists have found that it contains not only stars. Physicists believe S1 may contain a large store of dark matter that once held the dwarf galaxy together.
Despite the fact that the stream was nicknamed "the hurricane of dark matter", its discovery made scientists very happy. Current technology does not yet allow us to see dark matter. Moreover, we do not know what it is. Nevertheless, we know that it exists. It affects all objects in space, and this is just what you see very well. There is a possibility that when the dark matter of the hurricane meets the local dark matter, the latter may have a burst. Receiving a signal from this burst could be the first physical measurement of dark matter. In this case, we will finally be able to prove its existence.
Mysterious signal
Scientists have long debated what causes massive gamma-ray emissions from the Milky Way's galactic center - the so-called galactic bulge. According to most assumptions, dark matter may be the source of these emissions. The emissions are allegedly related to the fact that particles of dark matter (WIMP) bump into each other or with ordinary matter. This is indeed hinted at by some of the findings. For example, the smoothness of signals that scientists would expect from dark matter.
However, in 2018, an international team of researchers found evidence that dark matter, a type of star formation near the center of the Milky Way, is not responsible for gamma emissions.
Data from the Fermi space telescope were taken as a basis for the study. The researchers saw that gamma rays actually reflect the distribution of stars near the center of the galaxy - they form in an X shape, not a sphere, as would be expected if caused by dark matter interactions. By creating a model to recreate the processes taking place, the team found that a more likely explanation would be a collection of millisecond pulsars (rapidly rotating neutron stars) - their combined emissions appear to have merged to create a signal that was originally attributed to dark matter.
Toxic space fat
Space in space may seem completely empty, but it is filled with electromagnetic radiation, soot and dust. In 2018, during a study, a team of specialists from Australia and Turkey decided to estimate the amount of another substance contained in the Milky Way - "cosmic fat".
The researchers found that only half of the carbon, a key element for life expected to be found in space, is present in pure form. The rest of the substance exists in two main chemical compounds: fat-like (aliphatic) and aromatic (like naphthalene balls).
In the laboratory, scientists simulated the synthesis of organic molecules in a stream of carbon stars, explaining the presence of an element-containing plasma in a vacuum at low temperatures. The material was then analyzed by several technicians. Using magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy, scientists have determined how strongly the structure absorbs light from certain infrared waves, a marker for aliphatic carbon.
It turned out that for every million hydrogen atoms there are about 100 fatty hydrogen atoms, or from 25% to 50% of all available substance. The Milky Way thus contains nearly 11 billion trillion trillion tons of fatty substance. And all this mass is probably very dirty and toxic.
Now scientists want to estimate the concentration of aromatic carbon, which will require more sophisticated research. By counting the amount of each form of substance, they can determine how much of the element is available to create life.
A rogue planet or its own star
There is a very strange object about 20 light years away. When scientists first discovered it in 2016, they thought they had found a brown dwarf. These objects are also called "failed stars". They are larger in size than ordinary planets, but they cannot be called stars either. In their depths, as in the depths of real stars, thermonuclear reactions take place, but the participation of hydrogen in them is minimal.
A recent study of the object has shown that another fact complicates its classification. SIMP J01365663 + 0933473 (this is the name of the object) is a cosmic body "outcast". In other words, it does not belong to any star system, but literally wanders alone in space. In addition, its age is estimated at about 200 million years, which does not allow to call it a brown dwarf (too young).
Before us is a unique representative - a cross between a failed star and a planet. This big man is about 70 times more massive than Jupiter and has a 200 times stronger magnetic field.
The presence of such a powerful magnetic field creates auroras in the upper layers of its atmosphere. By studying this object, scientists hope to kill two birds with one stone - to learn about the magnetism of both stars and planets.
Old wound
Studying a detailed map of the galaxy, scientists have discovered something unusual - a strange cluster of stars exhibiting unusual behavior. In general, they formed a disk along with the rest of the stars in the region, but not included in this group, and revolved around the galactic center. But besides this, they also revolved around each other. Visually, it resembled the curls on a snail shell.
In 2018, scientists decided to “turn back time”. They took data on six million stars, containing information about their position and speed, and tried to use them and computer simulations to "unfold" the snail shell. The result showed that the unusual shape of the cluster of stars is most likely a kind of galactic "scar". About 300-900 million years ago, a very strong gravitational perturbation caused by an incomprehensible source "hit" the Milky Way and literally ripped a small piece off the galaxy.
The main suspects, scientists have chosen the nearest dwarf galaxy Sagittarius. Previous studies have shown that about 200 million to 1 billion years ago, the Sagittarius galactic disk could have been hit by the Milky Way's galactic disk. These results are fully consistent with what was observed in subsequent studies, which are mentioned above. Our galaxy, it turns out, is very vindictive. The Milky Way is now stealing stars from Sagittarius and in about 100 million years will destroy (or consume) the galaxy that injured it.
Dead galaxy
It may sound strange, but inside our galaxy is the corpse of another galaxy. In 2018, astronomers conducted a study of the motion of stars within the Milky Way and in the course of this large-scale scientific work it was discovered that approximately 33,000 stars do not belong to our galaxy.
Scientists can determine their nature by the motions of stars, thanks to this it was found that the discovered stars do not belong to the Milky Way, since their behavior was not similar to other stars in neighboring systems. A more detailed analysis of 600 of these stars allowed researchers to figure out the age and size of the galaxy to which they belonged until they entered the Milky Way. Scientists named her Gaia Enceladus.
Astronomers claim that our galaxy has swallowed up its dwarf neighbors more than once in the past. The same fate awaited the Gaia Enceladus galaxy. About 10 billion years ago, it was 1/5 the size of the Milky Way, but this did not stop the latter from swallowing it whole.
The stars of the annihilated galaxy now make up most of the Milky Way's halo, and also form its thick disk, giving it an inflated shape. In other words, if this collision hadn't happened, our galaxy would have looked very different.
Lost Twin
The local supercluster of galaxies contains two heavyweights - our Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy - as well as many dwarf satellite galaxies. Among them is the M32 object. It "spins" next to Andromeda, but the composition and shape of this dwarf are so unusual that it is difficult to find a proper explanation for this. It is very compact and has practically no old stars, and it also has a very faint halo.
In 2018, astronomers found that the local supercluster of galaxies once had a third, very massive galaxy. In order to figure out where to do it, the researchers turned their attention to Andromeda's halo. As a result, it turned out that most of the stellar halo surrounding the Andromeda galaxy (M31) comes from one large galaxy M32p, which collided with the Andromeda galaxy 2 billion years ago, and the remnants of the dead galaxy now revolve around the Andromeda galaxy in the form of a companion galaxy M32.
This discovery is another reminder of the future of our Milky Way. Our galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy must collide too. As a result, our Milky Way will face the fate of M32. Fortunately for us, this will not happen until 4 billion years from now.
Strange thread
Recently, astronomical observatories in several countries turned their telescopes to the same object - a black hole in the center of our galaxy. Thanks to this, scientists have received the most detailed image of Sagittarius A * at the moment.
Sometimes radio telescopes capture images of some non-thermal radio filaments. They do not appear in the optical spectrum and no one knows what they are. One such thread appeared in the image of the Sagittarius A * black hole. Its length is about 2.3 light years and, apparently, one of its ends falls into the very center of the black hole.
What has been seen so far defies explanation, but there are several assumptions on this score. According to one of the versions put forward earlier by theorists, radio filaments are capable of generating the so-called synchrotron radiation, which occurs when charged particles are accelerated under the influence of a magnetic field. However, in this case it is not clear - where, in principle, these charged particles come from? Who charged them?
According to another assumption, the filaments are nothing more than a "break" in space, the so-called topological defect, theoretically arising under the influence of a changing state of vacuum. According to some opinions, these filaments have a similar charge and mass to galactic filaments, which, like a spider web, cover the entire space of the universe.
Nikolay Khizhnyak
