The monster black hole at the center of our galaxy may be unleashing huge, gassy explosions — and now, astronomers think they’ve pinpointed the exact spot where that superheated gas is spilling into the Milky Way. Acting like a gargantuan exhaust vent, the newly discovered feature is a bright region of X-ray energy that’s nearly … Read more
Galaxies like our Milky Way are mysteriously hard to come by in our cosmic backyard. New supercomputer simulations have helped astronomers finally answer why. The Milky Way sits within a galaxy cluster on the Supergalactic Plane — a billion light-year-wide sheet, or “supercluster,” upon which large galaxy clusters are pinned. But other spiral galaxies are … Read more
Astronomers have discovered hundreds of strange, stringlike structures at the center of our galaxy, possibly tracing the violent path of an ancient black hole eruption. According to new research published June 2 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, each of these previously unknown “filaments” measures between 5 and 10 light-years in length — thousands of times … Read more
For the first time, scientists have discovered a double-star system that is doomed to explode in a fiery “kilonova,” a precious-metal-creating blast caused by the merger of two stellar corpses. The kilonova — which will send gold, silver, platinum and other new heavy elements careening into space — won’t happen for millions of years. But … Read more
The exact origins of the Milky Way are shrouded in mystery. But astronomers believe that our home galaxy started out more than 13 billion years ago, and that it was much smaller than its present-day size. How did it grow so much to reach its current size? For that, we can likely thank eons of … Read more
The Milky Way is home to millions of potentially habitable planets — and approximately four of them may harbor evil alien civilizations that would invade Earth if they could, new research posted to the preprint database arXiv (opens in new tab) suggests. The new paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, poses a peculiar question: … Read more
Two of the strangest, most colossal structures in the Milky Way may have formed in a 100,000-year-long explosion at our galaxy’s center, new research suggests. Those structures — named the Fermi bubbles and eROSITA bubbles after the respective telescopes that discovered them — straddle the Milky Way’s center in an enormous hourglass shape, with one … Read more
Welcome to the latest installment of “Writer Fuel – cool real-world stories that might inspire your little writer heart. Check out our Writer Fuel page on the LimFic blog for more inspiration. Today: The center of the Milky Way may be even more bizarre than astronomers thought, according to a new study. For the study, … Read more
We’re launching a brand new feature on Liminal Fiction – “Writer Fuel – cool real-world stories that might inspire your little writer heart. Today: Astronomers have detected a strange, repeating radio signal near the center of the Milky Way, and it’s unlike any other energy signature ever studied. According to a new paper accepted for … Read more
We’re launching a brand new feature on Liminal Fiction – “Writer Fuel – cool real-world stories that might inspire your little writer heart. Today: An enormous number of rogue supermassive black holes may be wandering around the universe, new simulations find. In fact, wandering giant black holes may account for a whopping 10% of the … Read more
