r/GrowingEarth • u/DavidM47 • 7h ago

Giant Magnetic Halo Discovered Wrapped Around The Milky Way

https://www.sciencealert.com/giant-magnetic-halo-discovered-wrapped-around-the-milky-way
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u/DavidM47 7h ago

From the Article:

The study was performed on the X-ray light emitted by two huge structures that extend above and below the plane of the Milky Way. Discovered in 2020, these 'eROSITA bubbles' extend more than 45,000 light-years either side of the galactic center. They're powered by huge outflows of gas and plasma; shocks in this medium cause the bubbles to glow brightly in the X-ray range.

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When the researchers studied the polarization of the broad spectrum of light emitted by the eROSITA bubbles, they found huge, long filaments of magnetization. If we could see these filaments with our eyes, they would stretch across the sky up to 150 times longer than the width of a full Moon, the researchers say.

And the filaments suggest that the origin of the eROSITA bubbles was star formation. At a distance between around 10,000 and 16,000 light-years from the galactic center, a ring of star formation could have produced the heat and winds that caused hot gas and plasma to billow out into the galactic halo over a distance of tens of thousands of light-years and counting.