They link mysterious bumps on the Milky Way Galaxy missing matter – ABC Color

SYDNEY. Almost invisible mysterious “packages” found in gas clouds that connect the stars in the Milky Way could comprise part of the missing matter in the galaxy, according to a study.

These structures have shaped noodles, lasagne sheets or hazelnuts, according to the study led by Keith Bannister , the Organization for Research Industrial and Scientific Association of Australia (CSIRO) and published in the journal Science .

“They can radically change our idea about the interstellar gas is the reservoir recycling the stars in the galaxy and housing material old stars that will be rebuilt in other new, “Bannister said in a statement CSIRO.

These mysterious objects were first detected 30 years ago to through a radio waves emanating from a quasar brightness of a distant galaxy that varied widely in its intensity.

So the astronomers could not determine what it was, but attributed this behavior to the “atmosphere” Invisible galaxy, a gas of electrically charged particles that fills the space between stars.

“Packages in the gas act as lenses, which focus and defocus the radio waves, making it appear strengthen or weaken over days, weeks or months, “Bannister said.

The research ordered the set of powerful telescopes in eastern Australia, who led the quasar PKS 1939-315 in the constellation Sagittarius , allowing them to observe a lens effect that lasted a year.

Astronomers believe that the lenses are about the size of Earth’s orbit around the sun and is about 3,000 light-years, ie a thousand times farther than the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, said CSIRO. So far, the shape of these structures were unknown, but scientists believe that the lenses are not similar to a solid lump or folded paper.

“We could be seeing a flat paper-edge” or a kind the “barrel of a hollow cylinder as a noodle or a spherical shell like a hazelnut” said another team member said CSIRO Cormac Reynolds .

This lensing It was observed by the CSIRO team with radio and optical telescopes, but in the case of the second quasar light was unchanged, indicating that such phenomena are invisible to these tools. Bannister also said that these lenses can explain what astronomers call the problem of missing matter in the universe.

“Current models of nucleosynthesis in the first minutes of the Big Bang 13,800 million years ago predict that produced more hydrogen, helium and lithium that we find today, “Bannister said on ABC.

” The leading candidate is the hot plasma contained in the filaments and knots of large scale structures, like cobwebs in the Universe. Our lenses will provide another candidate, “he said.