An international team of astronomers has presented a new study that may explain the nature of mysterious celestial structures that researchers have been thinking about for decades. The authors of the work hypothesized that the Earth may be surrounded by a giant magnetic tunnel. This discovery could have significant implications for our understanding of the cosmos and its interaction with Earth.
The north polar spur and fan region observed in the northern part of the Milky Way may be connected by an extensive system of magnetized “fibers.” Together they form a structure that resembles the shape of a giant tunnel that surrounds not only our solar system, but also many nearby stars. This discovery was made thanks to modern technology and analysis of data accumulated by science over the past decades.
Scientists note that these two mysterious structures have been known since the 1960s, but no analysis conducted by scientists has linked them together. Researchers Mathewson and Milne, in a paper published in 1965, proposed the hypothesis that polarized radio signals could create a huge tunnel when looking at the Local Bubble. This hypothesis was not accepted by the scientific community at the time, but now astronomers have been able to confirm it using new data and more accurate research methods.
To test their hypothesis, the astronomers built a computer model that took into account observations from ground-based telescopes. They ran simulations to see what the sky would look like if two opposing structures were connected by magnetic filaments. As a result of the study, the team concluded that the most likely distance from our solar system to these structures is about 350 light-years. And the total length of the tunnel modeled by the researchers is about 1,000 light-years.
This discovery has major implications for our understanding of the cosmos and its interaction with Earth. The giant magnetic tunnel may play an important role in the formation and evolution of galaxies, as well as in the distribution of energy and matter in the universe. It may also explain some of the anomalies observed in the radio wavelength range.
Jennifer West, an astronomer at the University of Toronto in Canada, notes that if we had eyes capable of picking up radio emissions, we would see this tunnel structure in almost every direction we look. This discovery could change the way we think about the universe and our place in it.
