Scientists have discovered a mysterious object at the center of our Milky Way that doesn’t fit the criteria for anywhere else in the galaxy.
The team found that the object emits microwaves, suggesting it contains fast-moving dust and gas. almost 112,000 miles per hour from a very small area in the heart of our galaxy.
Astronomers have considered a variety of options for what the object could be, from a black hole to a collapsing cloud to an evolved star, but found that “its characteristics do not match well those of any known type of astronomical body.”
The team found that the object emits microwaves, suggesting it contains fast-moving dust and gas. The gas was detected moving at almost 112,000 miles per hour from a very small area in the heart of our galaxy.
“The center of our galaxy contains billions of stars, tens of millions of solar masses of gas, a supermassive black hole, a tenth of our galaxy’s ongoing star formation, and an extensive graveyard of stellar debris,” the researchers shared. researchers in the study published in the Letters from astrophysical journals.
“Therefore, it is the most likely place to find new kinds of objects. We present one such object in this work.
The object, labeled G0.02467–0.0727, was discovered using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observatory in Chile.
“We consider several explanations for the millimeter ultra-broad line object (MUBLO), including protostellar flow, explosive flow, cloud collapse, an evolved star, a stellar merger, a high-speed compact cloud, a black hole of intermediate mass and a background galaxy,” he explained. the team wrote.
“Most of these conceptual models do not match the data or do not fully explain them.”
The object was observed while the ALMA team was studying a special area in the center of our galaxy, known as the central molecular zone (CMZ).
The CMZ, measuring about 700 light-years across, contains nearly 80 percent of all the dense gas in the galaxy and is home to giant molecular clouds and massive star-forming clusters that are not well understood.
Astronomers detected millimeter waves coming from the object, and the surrounding dust showed broad, scattered signals.
The object also emitted continuous radiation, which appeared to come from dust and emitted specific signals from certain molecules such as carbon monosulfide and sulfur monoxide.
Carbon monosulfide has been detected in molecular clouds and sulfur monoxide has been observed around Io, one of Jupiter’s moons.
Scientists have discovered a mysterious object at the center of our Milky Way that doesn’t fit the criteria of any other element in our universe.
The object, labeled G0.02467–0.0727, was discovered using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observatory in Chile, which also detected microwaves darting through space.
The temperature of the gas was around -436 degrees Fahrenheit, much colder than has typically been seen in this part of the galaxy.
The researchers also discovered that the gas molecules were not traveling in a simple ring, suggesting they could be moving away from an exploding star. Nature.
However, shock waves create specific chemicals that MUBLO lacks.
The researchers said the most plausible explanations would be an intermediate-mass black hole or a pair of merging stars obscured by dust.
But they also noted that the object does not fit any of the definitions.
“The MUBLO is currently a unique observational object,” the team concluded in the study.