Nearly 1,000 mysterious strands revealed in Milky Way's center

A new telescope image of the turbulent center of the Milky Way has revealed nearly 1,000 strands.

The one-dimensional strands are found in pairs and clusters and are often stacked side by side like strings on a harp. In the early 1980s, Farhad Yusef-Zadeh discovered the highly organized, magnetic filaments using observations at radio wavelengths. He found that the Cosmic Ray electrons were gyrating the magnetic field at close to the speed of light. Their origin has remained a mystery ever since.

Yusef-Zadeh and his team were able to conduct statistical studies across a broad population of filaments for the first time because of the new image. This information could help them figure out the mystery.

The study has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Yusef-Zadeh, the paper's lead author, said that they have studied individual filaments for a long time with a "myopic view". It's hard to draw a conclusion about what they are and where they came from. This is a big step in furthering our understanding of these structures.

Yusef-Zadeh is a professor of physics and astronomy at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

The image is being constructed.

Astronomers spent three years surveying the sky and analyzing data at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory to construct the image with unprecedented clarity and detail. Researchers used 200 hours of time on a telescope to piece together a mosaic of 20 separate observations of different sections of the sky.

The full image will be published in an additional paper, led by Ian Heywood and co-authored by Yusef-Zadeh, in a forthcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal. The image captures radio emissions from many phenomena, including stellar nurseries and new supernova remnants.

I have spent a lot of time looking at this image in the process of working on it, and I never get tired of it. Over the years, it has been a pleasure to work with colleagues from SARAO who built this fantastic telescope.

Yusef-Zadeh's team used a technique to remove the background from the main image in order to separate the filaments from the surrounding structures. He was astounded by the picture.

He said that it was like modern art and that the mystery of it all made it even more interesting.

We know what we know.

Yusef-Zadeh has been able to piece together more of the puzzle. He and his colleagues looked at the role of Cosmic rays in illuminating the magnetic fields.

The variation in radiation from the filaments is different from the one found in the supernova remnant, suggesting that the phenomena have different origins. It is more likely that the filaments are related to the activity of the black hole in the center of the universe. Yusef-Zadeh and his team discovered enormous, radio-emitting bubbles in 2019.

The magnetic fields are amplified along the filaments, a characteristic that Yusef-Zadeh already knew.

This is the first time we have been able to study the statistical characteristics of the source.

If you were from another planet, you might assume all people are tall. You can find the average height if you do statistics across a group of people. That is exactly what we are doing. We can find the strength of magnetic fields, their lengths, their orientations, and the spectrum of radiation.

We don't know what.

Yusef-Zadeh is puzzled by the structure of the filaments. There are no differences in the distance between Earth and the sun.

He said that they almost resemble the regular spacing in solar loops. Multiple other questions arise when we answer one question.

Yusef-Zadeh and his team still don't know what is causing the electrons to accelerate at such incredible speeds.

He asked how you accelerate electrons at close to the speed of light.

What is next?

Yusef-Zadeh and his team are cataloging the different types of plants. The angle, curve, magnetic field, spectrum and intensity of each Filament will be published in a future study. The astrophysics community will be given more clues into the elusive nature of these properties.

New secrets will be revealed by the MeerKAT telescope.

Yusef-Zadeh said that science is a series of progress on different levels. We want to get to the bottom of it, but more analysis is needed. A full understanding of complex objects takes time.

NASA and the National Science Foundation supported the study on the statistical properties of the population of the galactic center.

More information: F. Yusef-Zadeh et al, Statistical Properties of the Population of the Galactic Center Filaments: The Spectral Index and Equipartition Magnetic Field. arXiv:2201.10552v1 [astro-ph.GA], arxiv.org/pdf/2201.10552.pdf

The 1.28 GHz MeerKAT Galactic Center Mosaic was written by I. Heywood.

Journal information: Astrophysical Journal , Astrophysical Journal Letters Citation: Nearly 1,000 mysterious strands revealed in Milky Way's center (2022, January 26) retrieved 26 January 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-01-mysterious-strands-revealed-milky-center.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.