A 'galactic underworld' of ancient, blown-up stars lurks just beneath the Milky Way's surface
Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2022 7:18 pm
A 'galactic underworld' of ancient, blown-up stars lurks just beneath the Milky Way's surface
https://www.livescience.com/milky-way-g ... d-revealed
During the Milky Way's roughly 13.6-billion-year history, billions of stars have formed, grown and ultimately died in spectacular supernova explosions. So, where are all of their corpses hiding?
In new research published Aug. 25 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, astronomers set out to dig up those long lost stellar bodies (so to speak). Using a computer simulation, the team modeled the initial positions of millions of stars in the early Milky Way (long before its iconic spiral arms developed), then hit a cosmic fast-forward button to show where the shriveled remains of those stars may have ended up after going supernova.
The resulting map revealed a "galactic underworld" of black holes and neutron stars (two forms of extremely dense stellar remnants), which lurks in every corner of the Milky Way — and far beyond it as well. According to the researchers, the galactic underworld stretches more than three times the height of the Milky Way itself, while as many as one third of the galaxy's dead stars have been jettisoned deep into space by the force of their own end-of-life explosions, never to return.
https://www.livescience.com/milky-way-g ... d-revealed
During the Milky Way's roughly 13.6-billion-year history, billions of stars have formed, grown and ultimately died in spectacular supernova explosions. So, where are all of their corpses hiding?
In new research published Aug. 25 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, astronomers set out to dig up those long lost stellar bodies (so to speak). Using a computer simulation, the team modeled the initial positions of millions of stars in the early Milky Way (long before its iconic spiral arms developed), then hit a cosmic fast-forward button to show where the shriveled remains of those stars may have ended up after going supernova.
The resulting map revealed a "galactic underworld" of black holes and neutron stars (two forms of extremely dense stellar remnants), which lurks in every corner of the Milky Way — and far beyond it as well. According to the researchers, the galactic underworld stretches more than three times the height of the Milky Way itself, while as many as one third of the galaxy's dead stars have been jettisoned deep into space by the force of their own end-of-life explosions, never to return.