Chinese researchers have discovered a mysterious barrier that seems to be stopping cosmic rays from entering through the center of our galaxy. What’s more surprising is that the same region appears to be accelerating these rays at high speeds.
The research explains just how difficult it is to get an accurate reading of what’s happening inside the swirling ball of excited cosmic rays that makes up the center of the Milky Way. Highly energetic events such as the collision of two galaxies, or objects such as supermassive black holes, emit storms of cosmic rays, which essentially amount to protons.
Forming cosmic sea
These rays are usually accelerated to almost the speed of light by these events and celestial objects, which interact in different ways with Milky Way’s magnetic field, which appears to form them into what’s called the cosmic “sea.”
Astronomers’ working theory suggests that there’s a supermassive black hole named Sagittarius A* at the center of the Milky Way, where it whips cosmic rays into a whirlwind. The findings of the research were published in the journal Nature Communications. The team discovered that some of these rays were unable to push their way past a dense barrier and enter a central molecular cloud of interstellar dust and hydrogen gas known as the cosmic ray sea.
Data helped make the theory
The researchers used data extracted using the Fermi Large Area Telescope, a space observatory that observes several cosmological phenomena such as gamma-ray bursts and solar flares. Other rays that weren’t entirely stopped by this barrier first slowed down and then sped up again as they passed through the central cloud. It led the team to think there’s something like a particle accelerator at the galactic center.
Recently, researchers suggested they have found evidence that the expanding universe is also making black holes grow bigger. The research claims that the universe’s expansion might be causing celestial objects like supermassive black holes to expand as well. The team also found that this growth could also occur in black holes that weren’t colliding, like the ones that are located at the centers of galaxies.
