Mysterious 'Wave' of Star-Forming Gas May Be the Largest Structure in the Galaxy

[SMM]

Along with other recent strange cosmic discoveries, this article by Brandon Specktor was published on LiveScience three hours ago.

It was published in the journal Nature today.

According to this article, "The Radcliffe Wave" consists of baby-booming stars and gas and was detected around Orion.

Spanning about 9,000 light-years (or about 9% of the galaxy's diameter), the unbroken wave of stars begins near Orion in a trough about 500 light-years below the Milky Way's disk. The wave swoops upward through the constellations of Taurus and Perseus, then finally crests near the constellation Cepheus, 500 light-years above the galaxy's middle. The entire undulating structure also stretches about 400 light-years deep, includes some 800 million stars and is dense with active star-forming gas (known in more delightful terms as "stellar nurseries").

The article continues:

When observed in 3D atop the rest of the Milky Way, this swooping suburb of baby-booming stars appears to be more than just the sum of its parts, study co-author João Alves said in a statement.

"What we've observed is the largest coherent gas structure we know of in the galaxy," said Alves, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Vienna. "The sun lies only 500 light-years from the wave at its closest point. It's been right in front of our eyes all the time, but we couldn't see it until now."

Alves and an international team of colleagues detected the Radcliffe Wave (named for Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, where the bulk of the research was conducted) while creating a 3D map of the Milky Way with data gathered largely by the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite. They noticed the strange, undulating pattern of gas and stars around Orion when looking at an object known as the Gould Belt, which was first detected more than 100 years ago.

For a century, astronomers have thought the Gould Belt was a ring-shaped circle of star-forming gas, with Earth's sun near its center. However, once the authors of the new study began digging into the Gaia data, they realized this does not seem to be the case. Rather, the Gould Belt appears to be just a piece of the much larger Radcliffe Wave, which does not form a ring around our solar system but swoops toward and away from it in an enormous waveform.

"We don't know what causes this shape but it could be like a ripple in a pond, as if something extraordinarily massive landed in our galaxy," Alves said.

Prior studies of the Gould Belt have suggested the same. Perhaps a gigantic blob of dark matter crashed into the young gas cloud millions of years ago, warping the galaxy's gravity and scattering the nearest stars into the pattern seen today, one 2009 study in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society posited.

"What we do know is that our sun interacts with this structure," Alves said.

According to the researchers, stellar velocity data suggests that our solar system passed through the Radcliffe Wave some 13 million years ago — and, in about another 13 million years, will cross into it again.

"Sort of like we are 'surfing the wave,'" Alves added.

Might there be more, or something else, to this discovery besides gas and stars?

They are using the 'dark matter, gaseous particles' frame of reference. Standard cosmology. From what I can make out from the article, they are probably using 3D tools of inspection and detection limited to a certain electromagnetic range.

Plasma being present jumps out as a possibly with an Electric Universe persepective.

All in all, an interesting read in light of the recent session and the C's statements from it:

A: Now, we would like to say something of interest to all: Soon things in your realm will become very chaotic and strange. It will give chills to many. Be not alarmed! It will pass and there will be a new reality to explore. Cosmic forces will be displayed and there will be many searching for answers. Be prepared to give the help that is needed. Be together in love and peace. Goodbye.

Maybe it's a cold front carrying a plague and Earth Changes, from our 3D perspective and experience; with High Strangeness in tow.

As Alves says at the end of the article:
"Sort of like we are 'surfing the wave'."

 

[SMM]

Prior studies of the Gould Belt have suggested the same. Perhaps a gigantic blob of dark matter crashed into the young gas cloud millions of years ago, warping the galaxy's gravity and scattering the nearest stars into the pattern seen today, one 2009 study in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society posited.

The mention of gravity here made me think of information, unstable gravity waves and their relation to physicality and matter:

(Pierre) Gravity and information... So matter is...

A: Unstable gravity waves, electromagnetism/light.

Q: (Joe) Ark, do you know what a gravity wave is?

(Chu) Do you know what an unstable gravity wave is?

(Joe) If he doesn't know what a gravity wave is, he doesn't know what an unstable one is.

(Ark) I don't know what gravity is.

(Joe) Is there anything else that...

A: Electricity is a manifestation.

Q: (Scottie) Well, we knew that.

(Joe) We did?

(Scottie) Yeah, they kinda said so years ago.

(Ark) I don't know what gravity is. That's the problem.

A: Gravity is all information.

Q: (Artemis) So it's light in a way.

(Chu) So gravity is all information, but gravity is also the impetus for going from pure information into matter.

(L) I guess gravity is all information, and the unstable gravity waves are information crossing the bridge.

A: Close.

There's another session that might be related that I'm having trouble finding, where the Cs suggested Ark studies unstable gravity waves.

 

[Chad]

Interesting find SMM!

Just in case it's of interest, since it's not featured in the Live Science article, the Harvard article provides a link to a Youtube lecture detailing the discovery - i haven't had chance to listen to it but it seems like it could be interesting, although i guess that the key points are already presented in the article above:

As part of the 2018–2019 Fellows’ Presentation Series at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the astrophysicist João Alves RI ’19 explains how an exhibition by the artist Anna Von Mertens helped guide him to the “Radcliffe wave” findings published in Nature in January 2020. Alves is a professor of stellar astrophysics at the University of Vienna, in Austria. He was the 2018–2019 Edward, Frances, and Shirley B. Daniels Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University. https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/peo...