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Sun is surfing on 9,000-light-year gas wave ...

Started by Rick, Jan 09, 2020, 09:40:11

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Rick

Astroboffins discover Sun is surfing on 9,000-light-year gas wave that acts as Milky Way's stellar nursery

The Milky Way's spiral arm that's home to our Solar System has been found to cradle the largest gaseous structure in the galaxy – a long, thin strip of jumbled star-forming matter measuring 9,000 light-years long and 400 light-years wide.

A team of researchers published details of their discovery in Nature this week. Named the Radcliffe Wave, after the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, where the study was led, the structure had never been observed before and overturns 150 years of cosmological theory.

More: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/01/09/radcliffe_wave_galaxy/