An enormous,1,000-light-year-wide “superbubble” surrounds our planet. Now, astronomers have made the first ever 3D map of its magnetic field.
The gigantic structure, known as the “Local Bubble,” is a hollow blob of diffuse, hot plasma enclosed by a shell of cold gas and dust along whose surface stars form. It is just one of numerous hollows found in the Milky Way — making our galaxy resemble an enormous slice of Swiss cheese.
Superbubbles are shock waves from the death throes of multiple massive stars, which in their final acts explode in enormous supernovas that blast out the gas and dust needed to birth new stars. As time passes, other stars, such as our own, wander inside the cavities left behind by these explosions.
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