Giant invisible structures may be lurking in the Milky Way, according to astronomers in eastern Australia. The detection of these structures, discovered at CSIRO’s Compact Array telescope may provide an explanation to the missing matter in the universe, also known as the baryon problem.
Published findings from past research suggested their presence, but the latest findings will help to identify size and shape of these objects. CSIRO astronomer Dr. Keith Bannister described the structures as ‘lumps’ detected in the gas between the stars and 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. “Lumps in this gas work like lenses, focusing and defocusing the radio waves, making them appear to strengthen and weaken over a period of days, weeks or months,” Dr. Bannister said.
Described as giant noodles, these structures aren’t solid objects. The odd shapes have led astronomers to describe them as hollow “noodles” or hazelnuts, with some of the structures possibly sheet-like in body. Dr. Bannister suggests there could be “thousands of these in the galaxy.”
Approximately 3,000 light years away, the closest structures are believed to move at around 30 miles per second. They may also account for some of the hidden mass in the Milky Way. However, Dr. Bannister states the discovery has nothing to do with dark matter, but the baryon problem. “That arises from the very successful theory of the Big Bang,” says Dr. Bannister. “The quirky bit is that it tells us that roughly 4 percent of the universe should be made of atoms, baryons, things that make up you and me.”
With the latest discovery Dr. Bannister is hopeful it could present future answers about matter and what our universe is actually made of.
This Article (CSIRO Discovers Invisible Structures Hiding Milky Way) is a free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author AnonWatcher and AnonHQ.com
