NASA scientists have discovered an unknown and unexplained extragalactic signal. According to Polly Thompson from the Wall, astronomers at NASA’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration have discovered a yet unexplained signal coming from outside our galaxy.
Scientists noticed this surprising signal by examining 13 years of data from the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope. From NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Francis Reddy, “This surprising signal coming from outside our galaxy, which we cannot yet understand, brings with it a great mystery.” said.
Powerful telescopes can detect energetic gamma rays that are thousands to hundreds of billions of times larger than our eyes can detect. These bursts of light usually occur when stars explode or nuclear explosions occur. However, while the team was actually doing research for a different purpose, they encountered an unexpected signal.
This is a Purely Accidental Discovery
Alexander Kashlinsky, a cosmologist at the University of Maryland and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said: American Astronomical Society’what you offer, “This is a completely accidental discovery.” “We discovered a much stronger signal than we expected, in a different region of the sky than we were looking for,” he said.
Scientists were investigating one of the earliest gamma ray elements, known as the cosmic microwave background, that formed the first atoms. CMB has a bipolar structure with one end hotter and denser than the other. Astronomers generally think that the motion of the Solar System creates this structure. But the researchers discovered that, contrary to their expectations, another unexplained element, coming from a similar direction and containing some of the most energetic cosmic particles they have ever detected, was emitting a signal of similar magnitude. Goddard astrophysicist Chris Shrader “We found a gamma ray dipole; However, its peak is in the southern sky, far from the CMBs, and its magnitude is 10 times greater than our expectations.” said.
Details of these findings were published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
It May Be Linked to a Source Discovered in 2017
Scientists think the discovery may be related to a cosmic gamma ray source observed by the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina in 2017. Considering their similar structures, astronomers believe that these two phenomena may have emanated from an undetermined source. They continue their research in hopes of discovering this mysterious source or developing alternative explanations for both phenomena.
This surprising discovery from NASA could help astronomers confirm or challenge their views on how the dipole structure occurs. “The discussion of the large dimensions and direction of the CMB dipole may provide us with a glimpse into the physical processes at work in the very early universe, possibly younger than a trillionth of a second,” said Fernando Atrio-Barandela, one of the co-authors of the research paper.
