Sorry for another APOD picture, I just thought this discovery was particularly interesting. Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2010 November 10 Huge Gamma Ray Bubbles Found Around Milky Way Credit: NASA, DOE, Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope, LAT detector, D. Finkbeiner et al. Explanation: Did you know that our Milky Way Galaxy has huge bubbles emitting gamma rays from the direction of the galactic center? Neither did anybody. As the data from the Earth-orbiting Fermi satellite began acuminating over the past two years, however, a large and unusual feature toward our Galaxy's center became increasingly evident. The two bubbles are visible together as the red and white spotted oval surrounding the center of the above all sky image, released yesterday. The plane of our Galaxy runs horizontally across the image center. Assuming the bubbles emanate from our Galaxy's center, the scale of the bubbles is huge, rivaling the entire Galaxy in size, and spanning about 50,000 light years from top to bottom. Earlier indications of the bubbles has been found on existing all sky maps in the radio, microwave, and X-ray. The cause of the bubbles is presently unknown, but will likely be researched for years to come.
I'm sure that it's supposed to be our sun. Obviously it's either an artist's rendition, or it's a picture of a galaxy very similar to the milky way.
Yea, the gamma is probably being emitted by the super massive blackhole (dormant for the period of time we are in) in the center of the galaxy. It makes sense too, look how all the objests are laid out in a fashion like a ring, not just a random blob of shit orbiting the center in random orbits, its for the most part all condensed in that "ring" so all the matter that reaches the black hole is coming from the "sides" that the rings would be at, and the emissions come from the "top and bottom" of the black hole in comparison to the rings... i watched a special on SM black holes in the center of galaxies...maybe 2 nights ago lol. The bubble effect is due to it being ejected out, then pulled back in kinda like a foundtain shooting water strait up... it kinda comes down on the sides.... kinda like that.... if that makes sense.... the black hole emits the stuff out, then it is slowly spread out and sucked back in by the massive gravity
If we could figure out how to harness the energy of a black hole, we wouldn't need any other source of fuel.
I suspect there are easier ways to harness renewable energy than through a black hole. Cool story and pic OP, shit like that just baffles the mind.
As above, so below http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/antigravityworldgrid/images/antigravitywg030.gif
That artistic rendition of these bubbles sure does bear a resemblance to p orbitals. New assumption: the Milky Way is an atom! Exciting discovery.
yea but in an atom the electrons can take up any random orbit, the galaxy as a very defined line where most of the shit is... orbiting in the same direction within that ring... What if all the galaxies we can see are just the quarks that make up 1 neutron in 1 nucleus, of 1 atom, in some huge ass universe tho hahaha.... i figure it would be more along those lines.... atoms tend to be more closely grouped than galaxies even on the scale of difference they are on.