A Strange Universe
What are these bubbles? What is Dark Matter, and Dark Energy?
The Fermi bubbles you see above were discovered by a team of scientists working at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, using the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (FGST). It shows two giant gamma and X- ray blob-like clouds that stretch for thousands of light-years above and below the galactic centre.
Back in the 1990s, clues of the bubbles’ lower outer edges (blue in the image) were first observed in X-rays using the X-ray telescope Röntgensatellit (ROSAT). The FGST further allowed researchers to see the full extent of the bubble by mapping the gamma radiation (magenta), and so we have this stunning conceptual image.
According to this Australian- US-led study, an enormous, violent explosion erupted from the centre of the Milky Way around 3.5 million years ago, which is likely to be the location of a supermassive black hole named Sagittarius A*.
Scientists now believe that these highly radiated Fermi bubbles are the remnants of that explosion that may have lasted up to 300,000 years. And given the explosion occurred relatively recently in galactic terms, this means that a segment of our early human ancestry would have witnessed this extraordinary event.
“The flare must have been a bit like a…
