Discovered “skeleton” covers an almost whole plane of our galaxy.
It turns out that our galaxy, the milky Way galaxy, like animals of different species, has its own “skeleton”, “bone” which begins in the center of the galaxy.
These bones are long and dense filaments of cold gas space, and until recently, scientists had known only of nine such entities. However, the new analysis method, which has “sifted” data collected 10-meter telescope Observatory Caltech Submillimetre Observatory, space telescopes, Spitzer and WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer), a telescope Observatory, Arizona Radio Observatory led to the discovery of another 45 of the gas filaments that gave into the hands of scientists more or less detailed picture of the “skeleton” of the milky Way.
Each of the detected yarn has a unique shape, some of which resemble the Roman letter S, others, and others. the Length of these gas filaments is in the range from 32 to 900 light years, and they are surrounded by a layer of gas, dust and stars that can be considered “flesh on these bones.” At the ends of some long filaments were seen secondary thread having a smaller thickness and length, but their origin remains a mystery to scientists. And discovered the “skeleton” covers an almost whole plane of our galaxy, and the higher concentration of these formations is observed in the Central regions of its spiral arms.
As mentioned above, a major role in the development of the painting “skeleton” of the milky Way played a new software algorithm, which formed the algorithm “minimum spanning tree algorithm”, typically used for calculations of the optimized networks of pipelines and roads. During data analysis, the algorithm determines all points in the galaxy, where there is a cold gas of a certain density. The algorithm then connects the dots based on a number of specific criteria that describe the gas filaments.
Scientists believe that in addition to the 54 currently known threads in the “skeleton” of our galaxy, there are at least another 200 threads of similar size. And further research in this direction will allow scientists to identify all of these threads and compile the most complete picture of the “skeleton” of the galaxy, which can contain a lot of hints about the processes of its emergence and further development.
