Scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Australia have discovered evidence of the existence of invisible noodles in our galaxy that is posing new challenges to understanding the conditions of gas in the Milky Way. The structures, which can also take the form of lasagna sheets or hazelnuts, appear as lumps in the thin gas layers that exist between our galaxy's stars.
"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," Keith Bannister, first author of the paper, said in a press release.
The team of astronomers made their observation using CSIRO's Compact Array telescope, which discovered the first lump that allowed them to estimate its shape. While these observations are novel, these mysterious objects showed signs of existence 30 years ago when astronomers detected radio waves from a distant galaxy that varied greatly in their strength, pointing to the presence of an invisible "atmosphere" between our galaxy's stars.
"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," Bannister said.
The team made their discovery by observing the quasar PKS 1939-315 in the Sagittarius constellation and believes that these noodles are approximately the size of the Earth's orbit around the sun and lie 3,000 light-years away. As of now, they are certain that the shape is not a solid lump or bent sheet.
"We could be looking at a flat sheet, edge on," said Cormac Reynolds, a member of the research team. "Or we might be looking down the barrel of a hollow cylinder like a noodle, or at a spherical shell like a hazelnut."
The team believes that these invisible structures could be cold clouds of gas held together by their own gravity, although they do not yet know where they may have originated.
"But these structures are real, and our observations are a big step forward in determining their size and shape," Bannister said.
The findings were published in the Jan. 22 issue of the journal Science.
