Massive Gamma Ray Bubbles Discovered In Milky Way

An anonymous reader writes "Two huge, mysterious gamma ray-emitting bubbles have been discovered at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, US astronomers said... The structure spans more than half of the visible sky, from the constellation Virgo to the constellation Grus, and it may be millions of years old."

Systematic Error

[biryokumaru]

So they used noisy data to try and algorithmically guess what was hidden behind a bunch of "fog" and got a giant bubble, and now their conclusion is "there's a giant bubble!" and not "Maybe we have a systematic error in our analysis..."? To be fair, it's possible there is a giant bubble, I don't know the math here, but it seems... suspect.

Anyway, this article [cosmosmagazine.com] sounds way cooler.

Black hole formation?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure I'm missing something, but I thought gamma ray bursts could occur as a result of black hole formation, which I thought was quite prevalent in the center of the galaxy. Wouldn't this be (or why isn't this) the top suspect?

Original Article

[Richard.Tao]

So far I am finding the original article an interesting read. (it's in the original article NYT article)
It states that the bubble may be related to an ejection of the super massive black hole in the past 10 million years or so. You know those other galaxies that have giant lazer beams shooting out of them? Well, ours could have been like that at some point 10 million years ago. Kind makes sense that those SM black holes only occasionally and intermittently shoot stuff off, seems like just emissions like that would be hard to sustain for long periods of time. (and holy mother of Bohr, it was hard to not fall into sexual innuendo there)
Also, as far as it being a data anomaly (which I thought first due to it's symmetry and the fact that we apparently never knew about it), it apparently correlates with "hard-spectrum excess known as the WMAP haze (and) the edges of bubble also line up with features in the ROSAT X-ray maps at 1.5 - 2 KeV."

Re:Evolution assistant

[HiThere]

As I understand it:

The earth passing through one of those bubbles would be more likely correlated with life having to start over. Perhaps some subducted radiodurans could survive, so we might not need to evolve DNA all over again. But one could expect all multicellular life to be killed, and most bacteria across all lines. That there would be surviving bacteria is not at all certain, but nothing else should be expected to survive.

OTOH, most of the action is taking place outside the plane of the galaxy, so at no point in it's orbit of the galaxy does the sun enter the danger area.

Re:*used to* have a black hole?

[BigSes]

The large scale and rapid intake of surrounding gas and objects around the blackhole produces those jets. Once the feeding slows, or stops, the jets disappear. They are then considered to be in a dormant stage. I actually recall reading or hearing somewhere that its thought that the heat and friction of the gas/objects spinning into the blackhole becomes so intense that it begins to push away the very materials that feed the blackhole itself (and therfore feed the jets). So, the blackhole still exists, but is in a dormant phase. I am unsure if anyone acutally knows this to be a proven fact as to why blackholes stop feeding, or if its just speculation.