They found a ‘massive structure’ lurking in the Milky Way

Scientists from the National University of San Juan in Argentina claim to have discovered a “large-scale structure” in a part of the Milky Way that has not yet been seen, according to new item Posted on arXiv server. Submitted to the magazine Astronomy and astrophysicsbut not yet peer-reviewed.

To be clear, the structure here is not some kind of man-made object; Rather, it is a newly discovered group of galaxies that were hiding behind the Milky Way. Given how difficult it is to observe other objects through the Milky Way, it is exciting that researchers have been able to observe this group of galaxies. What is happening on the other side of the galaxy around us and why is there a mystery?

Looking across the Milky Way

We can start with a simple thought exercise. You exist on Earth and therefore you are somewhere, right? So, where you live, what do you see outside the Earth? I am not referring to the open sky above the ground in your site. Instead, imagine that you can see through the land, sea, and magma to the other side.

The same applies to humanity, here on Earth, which is trying to look “through” the Milky Way at what lies beyond. The region of darkness created by the Milky Way itself is called the Zone of Evasion (ZOA). But isn’t the galaxy mostly empty space? One can look “through” a good portion of our local solar system in this respect, but two factors further complicate the situation.

The first is the physicality of the Milky Way, a kind of large, massive egg the Earth is located at one end of the albedo. Yes, the empty “space” may often be empty, but have you ever tried looking through a window from the edge rather than the face? It is very distorted and may not be usable, because even an obvious thing has flaws that build up visually when you look at it lengthwise. If you are looking at a large aquarium, it is easy to see through the broad, shallow front view of the back wall, but it is difficult to see if you are looking at the fringes.

This effect is called attenuation. Media such as water and glass block the passage of light over a long enough distance. In addition, we must add the galactic perturbation of the planets, and stars and particles, all of which lead to a blurry view of the brightest parts of the Milky Way. Furthermore, the center of the Milky Way is A Black hole Extremely massive, millions of times the size of our Sun, and millions of other stars orbit around it, forming a narrow, bright cluster that is hard to see.

escape zone

We’ve already covered the topic of shadows, but what about the light itself? “Extragalactic background light” is a term referring to a special type of light pollution that occurs in outer space. Because the universe is nearly infinitely massive – and constantly expanding – the light generated by stars stays in the mix practically forever. Think of a long exposure photo, especially the kind your phone suggests to take in night mode. Light persists and creates new light as it travels

This light bounces back almost forever, enhancing shadows created by the galaxy’s non-luminous physical barriers, such as planets and dust. Between luminous objects that obscure what lies behind them, between a gigantic black hole that obscures what lies behind them, and the innumerable objects and specks that obscure and cast a shadow of what lies behind them, the effect of chaos is better than the best mask with a “to cheat our facial recognition” style.

The area created is called the Evasion Zone, and it covers about 20% of the sky visible from Earth. It prevents us from seeing much of the Milky Way, as well as everything beyond and beyond, in detail, like a piece of cake that expands as it recedes from our view inside the Milky Way.

See you on the dark side of the galaxy

Real life isn’t like the 2008 superhero movie Wanted, where people who want it badly enough can make a curve of bullets in mid-air. Scientists have been wondering for centuries how they can somehow see “through” the avoidance zone. On the ground, seeing your blind spot in a car can be as easy as looking over your shoulder while changing lanes on the highway. But in space there hasn’t always been a good way to do it.

Scientists had to develop entirely new ways of trying to see physical and photonic chaos. Over time, they realized that if they changed the spectrum of light while playing – from the visible to the infrared – the Milky Way would have been much easier to explore and investigate with our wide range of distant instruments. After this discovery, various instruments have explored the Milky Way using infrared bandwidth for 40 years, Beginning of the IRAS study in 1983. Scientists have also explored the use of X-rays and radio waves.

So far, however, most studies have focused on identifying the promise of galaxies or clusters, simply trying to note their existence. What if that 20 percent of the sky was a superstructure that occupies the entire shadow area, like a cartoon villain? Yes, it sounds silly, but we didn’t know enough to rule it out. In this new research, scientists take it to the next level by nullifying the effects of the avoidance zone to find a similarly dense region outside the Milky Way that is “hidden” within the region.

according to vice explain How these researchers put together the full picture:

The researchers were able to detect this mass within ZoA using the VVV Survey, a project that surveys the bulge of the Milky Way at infrared wavelengths using the European Southern Observatory’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope (VISTA) in Paranal, Chile. To get closer to the puzzling region, the researchers used a near-infrared instrument called FLAMINGOS-2, which is located on the Gemini South Telescope in Chile. The results revealed new details about five galaxies located about three billion light-years away, which researchers believe are part of a much larger group.

What they found is an extragalactic structure, which simply means an object or group of things outside of the Milky Way. By analyzing the “hyperdense region” they selected for this study, the scientists were able to demonstrate that it has many of the same characteristics as other known galaxy clusters. They were able to observe this and use things like redshift – tracking what’s visible in the infrared spectrum and backcounting its possible presence in the visible spectrum – to make a general impression of this dense region outside our galaxy.

“The concordance of the redshifts obtained by the three different methods and the estimated parameters of the cluster allows us to confirm the nature of this structure as a group of galaxies, revealing a new extragalactic system that was hidden behind the bulge of the Milky Way,” the researchers concluded in their article.

“This result is very satisfactory for us,” he said. vice Principal Investigator Daniela Galdiano.