The Milky Way , like many other galaxies , is surrounded by a halo , a spherical region moderate wiz , gas , and a lot of dark thing . It draw out for hundreds of lightheaded - years , much further than the saucer where the Solar System is located . Despite its full passel of gas and stars being standardised to that of the galax platter , the halo is so big that everything in it is very outspread out , make it very hard to study .
One of our premiss is the temperature of the gas in the halo . Galaxy organization models provide a kitchen stove of economic value for how hot the gas can potentially get but new research published inThe Astrophysical Journal Lettersfinds that some parts are at least 10 times hot than the upper limit point expected from the manikin .
" We think that gasoline temperature in galactic halo ranged from around 10,000 to 1 million degree – but it turn over out that some of the accelerator in the Milky Way ’s anchor ring can come to a scorching 10 million degrees , " lead generator Sanskriti Das , a graduate investigator at The Ohio State University , sound out in astatement . " While we think that gas gets heated to around 1 million level as a galaxy ab initio forms , we ’re not sure how this factor bugger off so raging . It may be due to malarky emanating from the disk of stars within the Milky Way . "
The observation were potential thanks to theEuropean Space Agency ’s XMM - Newton X - light beam lookout station . Given the complexness of study it directly , the team had to be imaginative . They looked for objects known as blazars , which are supermassive ignominious hole feeding in distant galaxies with their high - vim squirt pointing right at us .
The X - ray emission from these incredible objects traverse the halo and some of the spread - out gas there can leave a theme song in the light spectrum . To check that that they were see everything , the team spent three calendar week detecting signal that would unremarkably be too faint to see .
" We analyzed the blazar ’s Inner Light and zeroed in on its individual spectral touch , ” said co - author Smita Mathur , also of The Ohio State University , and Das ' advisor . " There are specific signatures that only exist at specific temperatures , so we were able to determine how hot the halo gas must have been to affect the blazar illumination as it did . "
The team give up a 2nd newspaper , published inThe Astrophysical Journal , that attend at the piece of the gasolene in the halo . This is exciting because it ’s not on the nose what the researchers expected . We still have a luck more to take about what the halo is truly like .
