Shockwave: The Truth About the Giant Bubble That Clings to the 'Monster' That Contains the Earth

A study from Japan has provided an explanation for one of the most mysterious and spooky structures ever discovered: a pair of giant Fermi bubbles blowing out from the center of the galaxy that contains Earth.

First discovered by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in 2010, this pair of Fermi bubbles has been a great mystery to astronomers for more than a decade because it was the first time such a structure had ever been observed.

Huge and ghostly, the pair of Fermi bubbles symmetrically face each other across the galactic plane, seemingly blowing out from either side of the galactic center, where the monster black hole Sagittarius A* resides.

Fermi bubble pair (green).

A research team led by Professor Yutaka Fujita from Tokyo Metropolitan University presented new evidence based on a model that he and his colleagues recreated of the Milky Way galaxy that contains Earth.

According to SciTech Daily , scientists have found a pair of phenomena called "forward shock" and "reverse shock", in which the reverse shock is what blew up the ghostly bubble pair.

Specifically, it all comes from the winds blowing very fast from the monster black hole Sagittarius A*. Galactic winds are not like the cool breezes of Earth, but a stormy source of energy that erupts into the surrounding world, at a speed of 1,000 km/second.

These winds of charged particles bombard the surrounding space, sending shockwaves through the gas surrounding the galaxy. This fast, powerful, and violent collision creates a backshock, resulting in a special environment with a strong difference in temperature and energy. And that is the shell of the Fermi bubble.

Simulations show that this process also happens in other galaxies, it's just that our telescopes aren't powerful enough to "see" them yet.

The study was recently published in the scientific journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.