| 22nd of January 2016 |
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| CSIRO News Release |
| Dark `noodles' may lurk in the Milky Way |
| Invisible structures shaped like noodles,
lasagne sheets or hazelnuts could be floating around in our Galaxy radically
challenging our understanding of gas conditions in the Milky Way. CSIRO astronomer and first author of a paper released in Science Dr Keith Bannister said the structures appear to be `lumps' in the thin gas that lies between the stars in our Galaxy. "They could radically change ideas about this interstellar gas, which is the Galaxy's star recycling depot, housing material from old stars that will be refashioned into new ones," Dr Bannister said. Reference: Bannister, Stevens, Tuntsov, Walker, Johnston, Reynolds, Bignall 2016, Science 351, 354 - Real-time detection of an extreme scattering event: Constraints on Galactic plasma lenses More information: CSIRO News Release, and Keith Bannister's article in The Conversation. - Image credit: Alex Cherney. |