Particle Geysers in the Milky Way. In addition to a giant, matter-sucking hole of oblivion, the center of the Milky Way is also the location of an enormous amount of activity—stars are dying and bursting to life in a constant cycle. And recently, weve seen something else coming out of the galactic hub—a stream of high-energy particles that stretches over 15,000 parsecs across the galaxy. That’s more than half of the entire width of the Milky Way. They’re invisible to the naked eye, but with magnetic imagery, the particle geysers can be seen across almost two-thirds of our sky. What’s causing the phenomenon? One hundred million years of star formation and decay, fueling a never-ending jet creeping towards the galaxy’s outer arms. The total energy in the geyser is over a million times that of a supernova and the particles are traveling at supersonic speeds. And it’s not random—based on the structure of the particle jets, astronomers are building a model of the magnetic field that governs the entire galaxy.
Posted on: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 19:43:28 +0000
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