*A "Dense Bullet of Something" Blasted Holes in the Milky Way*
Dan Robitzski in Off World
*Bullet holes*
Scientists say that something mysterious punched gigantic, cosmic “bullet holes” in parts of the Milky Way.
There’s a string of holes in a long stream of stars called GD-1 that suggests that some yet-undiscovered thing blasted its way through, according to researchpresented to the American Physical Society last month. Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist Ana Bonaca, the scientist who discovered the cosmic crime scene, suspects that the gigantic “bullet holes” may have been carved out by invisible dark matter.
*Whodunnit*
Unfortunately, the culprit of this celestial shooting seems to have gotten away with it — Bonaca told Live Science that there’s no evidence at the crime scene beyond the size of the gaps in the stellar stream.
“We can’t map [the impactor] to any luminous object that we have observed,” Bonaca told Live Science. “It’s much more massive than a star… Something like a million times the mass of the Sun. So there are just no stars of that mass. We can rule that out. And if it were a black hole, it would be a supermassive black hole of the kind we find at the center of our own galaxy.”
*Dark hammer*
Because there’s no evidence of such a black hole, Bonaca suspects a ball of dark matter may have crashed through the stars. But it’s too early to definitively rule out any possibilities
Dan Robitzski in Off World
*Bullet holes*
Scientists say that something mysterious punched gigantic, cosmic “bullet holes” in parts of the Milky Way.
There’s a string of holes in a long stream of stars called GD-1 that suggests that some yet-undiscovered thing blasted its way through, according to researchpresented to the American Physical Society last month. Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist Ana Bonaca, the scientist who discovered the cosmic crime scene, suspects that the gigantic “bullet holes” may have been carved out by invisible dark matter.
*Whodunnit*
Unfortunately, the culprit of this celestial shooting seems to have gotten away with it — Bonaca told Live Science that there’s no evidence at the crime scene beyond the size of the gaps in the stellar stream.
“We can’t map [the impactor] to any luminous object that we have observed,” Bonaca told Live Science. “It’s much more massive than a star… Something like a million times the mass of the Sun. So there are just no stars of that mass. We can rule that out. And if it were a black hole, it would be a supermassive black hole of the kind we find at the center of our own galaxy.”
*Dark hammer*
Because there’s no evidence of such a black hole, Bonaca suspects a ball of dark matter may have crashed through the stars. But it’s too early to definitively rule out any possibilities
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