Space, to the naked eye, appears still, tranquil. But to scientists viewing it through increasingly powerful telescopes, it looks turbulent, with violent streams of gas buffeting dusty materials that form fascinating shapes, then disperse.
Now an international team of astronomers has employed the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to get a better view of this action. ALMA’s amazingly high resolution has sharpened the view of the tempestuous churn in Milky Way’s central zone.
This area, surrounding the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), acts as a kind of galactic mixing bowl, swirling gas and dust and emitting shock waves ripples. The astronomers observing this activity report a new structure in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics: long, thin filaments as an important byproduct of space material circulation.
Spying on Space Tornadoes
“We can envision these as space tornados: they are violent streams of gas, they dissipate shortly, and they distribute materials into the environment efficiently," Xing Lu, a research professor at Shanghai Astronomical Observatory and an author of research paper, said in a press release.
The general notion that the core of our galaxy, called the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) is an active place is not a new one. The forces that power the Mixmaster of the Milky Way have long remained a mystery. Observing interaction between this turbulent environment and the slim filaments produced, as shocks ripple through, provides a more complete view of the cyclical processes within the CMZ.
The dynamic interactions within this turbulent environment and the slim filaments it produced shows a clearer movie of the action. But the presence of the filaments provides another mystery.
“Unlike any objects we know, these filaments really surprised us,” Kai Yang, an astrophysicist from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China and an author of the paper, said in a press release. “Since then, we have been pondering what they are.”
Read More: 10 Facts You May Not Know About the Milky Way
Proposing a New Model
The slim filaments don’t fit into models of outflows from such systems, therefore they don’t match the profile of previously discovered dense gas filaments. Thus, they do not fit the profile of other previously discovered types of dense gas filaments. They also do not appear to be associated with dust emission.
Yang’s team hypothesizes that shock processes give rise to the filaments, because those forces release silicon monoxide (SiO), which is a useful molecule for detecting shock waves. The force also pushes several complex organic molecules into the gas phase, stirring them until they form filaments. Then, the slim filaments dissipate, releasing their contents back into the CMZ. Finally, those recently liberated molecules freeze into dust grains.
If such filaments exist widely throughout the Milky Way, and the researchers’ theory is correct, their formation and dissolution represents a cyclical balance of depletion and replenishment of molecules in the galaxy.
Article Sources
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Astronomy & Astrophysics. Astronomers Discover “Space Tornadoes” Around the Milky Way’s Core
Before joining Discover Magazine, Paul Smaglik spent over 20 years as a science journalist, specializing in U.S. life science policy and global scientific career issues. He began his career in newspapers, but switched to scientific magazines. His work has appeared in publications including Science News, Science, Nature, and Scientific American.
