ESA Discovers Unexpected 'Haze' of Microwave Transmissions 69
astroengine writes "The European space observatory Planck has discovered something peculiar about our galaxy: it's humming in microwaves and, for the moment, the source of the 'hard' radiation surrounding the galaxy's core is a complete mystery. Also, the Milky Way is home to previously unknown 'islands' of cold carbon monoxide gas, helping astronomers uncover the distribution of star-forming regions."
Haze is not new (Score:5, Informative)
Nice to see some new results from Planck, but the summary is a misleading (and the article itself too, to a lesser degree) when it comes to the haze. This haze was discovered by Planck's predecessor, the WMAP satellite - in fact, it is best known as the WMAP haze. It is true that its cause is unknown, though. People like to speculate that it might be due to annihilation of dark matter particles or other exotic physics, which would be exciting, but I'm partial to something more mundane, like more frequent supernova explosions near the center, as mentioned in the article.