Scientists at the Raman Research Institute (RRI) along with their collaborators in a study have revealed the mysterious sources that have pumped heat and kept alive the fiery hot gas around the disc of the Milky Way.
RRI scientists, along with their collaborators at IIT-Palakkad and Ohio State University, have detailed the mysterious source through their proposed model in two related studies.
According to the Department of Science and Technology a few decades ago, studies established the presence of gaseous matter surrounding our galaxy, the Milky Way.
“It was found that the galaxy was surrounded by a large sphere of gas which was a few million degrees Kelvin. This sphere of gas extended to 700 thousand light years. Such high temperatures, researchers said, could be associated with the gravity of the Milky Way, as atoms would have to constantly swirl around in order to rescue itself from falling prey to the galaxy’s strong gravity,” it said.
But what further intrigued the scientific community, in the more recent years, was the discovery of gaseous matter which was even hotter than what was known previously.
“This latest discovered gaseous matter was pitched to be around ten million degrees Kelvin. Faint X-ray emissions were found in all directions of the Milky Way that bore a strong signature of a super-hot gas. At the same time, this gas also showed up in the spectra of at least three distant quasars, as an absorbing medium,” it added.
A keenly studied research area emerged, and, since then, astronomers have been trying to find clues and links to the sources that was pumping heat and keeping alive the fiery hot gas.
Now the RRI team and their collaborators have confirmed that the gas responsible for emitting and absorbing the signals detected by astronomers are not the same.
Instead, the X-ray emitting hot gas was caused by a puffed-up region around the stellar disc of the Milky Way. Since there is a continuous on-going star formation at various regions across the disk of the Milky Way, the massive stars in these regions explode as supernovae, and heat the gas around the disk to high temperatures.
“As such, explosions keep heating up the gas floating around the disc of the Milky Way and they enrich the gaseous matter with elements synthesized within massive stars,” said Mukesh Singh Bisht, PhD student at RRI.
Published – November 26, 2024 08:18 pm IST
This post was originally published on here
Email
Remove
SEE ALL