Galactic bones inside Milky Way’s skeleton are a magnetic mess
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Astronomers have created the most detailed map yet of the magnetic field within a portion of one of the Milky Way’s spiral arms called the galactic bone — a long thread of dense gas and dust that forms at the center of a spiral galaxy’s arm. The new map reveals a random jumble of magnetic lines that contradict established magnetic properties seen in the rest of the Milky Way’s skeleton.
the Milky Way is a spiral galaxy, and the majority of the galaxy’s stars, and the cosmic dust that gives them birth, are concentrated in massive, elongated arms that revolve around the galactic center. Each arm has a series of galactic bones running through its middle, much like humans have bones running through the middle of our limbs. The gas and dust in these skeletal filaments are so dense that the bones produce their own magnetic Area.
In the new study, astronomers mapped the magnetic field of G47, a galactic bone 200 light-years long and 5 light-years wide. To do this, the researchers used the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a joint project of NASA and the German Space Agency (DLR). SOFIA is an airborne observatory consisting of a Boeing 747SP aircraft modified to carry a 2.7-meter (106-inch) diameter reflecting telescope that extends from a massive door in the aircraft to an altitude of up to to 45,000 ft (13,700 ft m). As a result, the telescope can be operated over about 99% Earth‘S Infrared-barrier atmosphere, acc NASA (opens in new tab).
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“We are now able to obtain so many independent measurements of magnetic field direction across these bones, allowing us to really delve into the meaning of the magnetic field in these massive filamentary clouds,” said lead author Ian Stephens, an astronomer at Worcester State University in Massachusetts, said in a statement (opens in new tab).
The researchers suggest that magnetic fields could potentially play a key role in determining the rate at which stars form in galactic bones.
“She [magnetic fields] can direct the flow of gas, shape the bones, and affect the amount and size of the densest pockets of gas that will eventually collapse into stars,” Stephens said in the statement. “By mapping the orientation of the fields, we can determine the relative importance of the magnetic field to that of heaviness to quantify how strongly magnetic fields affect the star formation process.”
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The map created with SOFIA shows that the magnetic field inside G47 is extremely chaotic, with no clear pattern or direction. The researchers had expected the magnetic field to be similar to the more uniform fields seen at larger scales across the Milky Way’s arms, where the magnetic field runs parallel to the arms, the statement said.
Although G47’s magnetic field appears random in some areas, it tends to be perpendicular in the densest regions along the bone. Other, less dense regions have more parallel fields, and researchers suspect these less dense regions are feeding gas into the denser regions where star formation is more likely. However, the team also believes that the magnetic field in these denser regions could be so strong that it actually inhibits star formation in some places by working against gravity, which is trying to collapse the gas into a new star, the statement said .
G47 is the first of 10 galactic bones selected for advanced mapping with SOFIA as part of the Filaments Extremely Long and Dark: a Magnetic Polarization Survey (FIELDMAPS) project. The overall goal of the FIELDMAPS project is to compare the magnetic fields of the galactic bones with computer simulations of spiral galaxies to see how they help shape the overall magnetic field of the Milky Way’s skeleton.
The study was published online on February 15 The Letters of the Astrophysical Journal (opens in new tab).
Originally published on Live Science.
Galactic bones inside Milky Way’s skeleton are a magnetic mess Source link Galactic bones inside Milky Way’s skeleton are a magnetic mess
