Wednesday, 20 July 2011

Milky Way's Core Hides Big Twisted Ribbon


A space telescope peering into the Milky Way galaxy's dusty core has spied a colossal twisted ribbon of super-cooled material. Until now astronomers had only seen bits and pieces of the ribbon's 600-light-year-wide superstructure, which resembles the Latin symbol for infinity.

The telescope's images suggest the ring is a chilly 15 degrees Kelvin and has two segments that poke out of the galaxy's pancake-like plain. Ground-based radio telescope data also hint that the ring is spinning around the core as one cohesive unit.

1 comment(s):

Anonymous said...

we're all just waiting to get sucked up in one of those black holes that's floating around our galaxy