The very first full-sky map of the high energy gamma ray universe
Last week, scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre discovered extremely energetic photons in the gamma wavelength using the Femmi Gamma-Ray telescope. Gamma rays are the highest-energy form of light.
Dave Thompson, an astrophysicist at the Goddard Centre, said that the telescope is “detecting so many [photons] we’ve been able to produce the first all-sky map of the very high energy universe” and that “About a third of the new sources can’t be clearly linked to any of the known types of objects that produce gamma rays … we have no idea what they are.”
Among the sources of these mysterious radio waves are super massive black holes, or blazars, remnants of supernova explosions, and pulsars. Some scientists who specialize in examining such radio emissions postulate thatFermi bubbles may be the key to understanding this new discovery.
Fermi bubbles, which were only discovered two years ago, are giant structures close to the Milky Way’s center. They span 20,000 light years above and below the galactic plane. How these bubbles formed is another mystery, but some say that they may be the remnants from the eruption from a supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy.
An artist's rendition of gigantic Fermi bubbles emenating from the centre of the Milky Way galaxy.
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics astronomer Doug Finkbeiner discovered the bubbles by analyzing publicly available data observed by Fermi’s Large Area Telescope (LAT) — the most sensitive and highest-resolution gamma-ray detector ever launched.
Here is a video from ScienceCasts chronicling the discovery:
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