Astronomers from Harvard University have uncovered the largest uniform, wave-shaped gaseous structure ever spotted in our galaxy. The gaseous structure comprises interconnected stellar nurseries and was discovered using the data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft. Researchers constructed a detailed, 3D map of interstellar matter in the Milky Way by combining the super-accurate data from Gaia with other measurements and noticed an unexpected pattern in the spiral arm closest to Earth. The findings change a 150-year-old theory of nearby stellar nurseries as an expanding ring into one featuring an undulating, star-forming thread that reaches trillions of miles above and below the galactic disk.