Time-space travel? The mysterious tunnel connecting our solar system to Centaurus discovered by scientists
Scientists mapping the bubble our solar system finds itself in made a new discovery, there is an “interstellar tunnel” that may connect to another bubble.
The Earth and our solar system with it are currently at the center of a bubble in space known as a Local Hot Bubble (LHB). This is an area of hot, low-density gas which has been theorized to exist since 1974.
Using data from the eROSITA All-Sky Survey, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) were able to map in detail our LHB and create a 3D model of it. At the same time, they discovered a large-scale temperature gradient in the bubble indicating how it was formed.
They also spotted something of great interest, which is featured in their study published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, an interstellar tunnel in the direction of the constellation Centaurus.
Time-space travel? The mysterious tunnel connecting our solar system to Centaurus discovered by scientists
“The highlight of this work features the discovery of a new interstellar tunnel towards the constellation Centaurus,” states the team of MPE researchers in a press release. This interstellar tunnel that they didn’t know existed could potentially join our LHB with a neighboring superbubble.
The tunnel “carves a gap in the cooler interstellar medium,” says astrophysicist Michael Freyberg, one of the authors of the research paper. “This region stands out in stark relief thanks to the much-improved sensitivity of eROSITA,” he added.
The authors of the study believe that this tunnel could be just a local example of a wider network of tunnels throughout the galaxy connecting hot bubbles. The bubbles themselves are believed to have been the creation of past supernova explosions. Some of these have been in just the past few million years which have expanded and reheated our LHB.
The fact that our Sun appears to occupy a relatively central position in the LHB in the teams model “is purely coincidental.” The solar system is constantly on the move through the Milky Way and it was just “another interesting fact,” to come out of the study remarked Gabriele Ponti, a co-author, “that the Sun must have entered the LHB a few million years ago.”
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