HomeSpace NewsMagnetic Milky Way filaments dwarfed by structures in galaxy cluster

Magnetic Milky Way filaments dwarfed by structures in galaxy cluster

Astronomers have discovered the distant relatives of huge, highly organized magnetic filaments dangling in the center of the Milky Way, a discovery that could help scientists finally explain these mysterious structures. 

These filaments dangle around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Astrophysicist Farhad Zadeh, now at Northwestern University in Illinois, first discovered the structures in the 1980s, when they left him puzzled and fascinated. Butarlier this year, Zadeh spotted about 1,000 similar filaments in a distant galaxy, offering a new clue. These magnetic filaments appear in pairs or clusters, sometimes even stacked and equally spaced. By comparing the distant filaments with his previous discovery, Zadeh and his colleagues have now suggested two possible explanations for the origin of these: from an interaction between large-scale wind and clouds or by turbulence inside a weak magnetic field.

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