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The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) interferometer has detected a foreign object only emit microwaves near the center of the Milky Way.
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Now a new study compares this object to known celestial bodies in this chaotic region of deep space. After doing this, the scientists behind the study discovered that none of the descriptions of the known objects fit this new object perfectly.
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Although the authors suspect that the object could be the remnants of a stellar merger or an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH), future studies in millimeter and mid-infrared bands will need to be conducted to definitively identify this currently unknown phenomenon.
Space is a big place.
But despite our small size among the hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way (which is itself one of hundreds of billions of galaxies), scientists have slowly compiled a long list of all the strange things we might encounter in the cosmos. Sometimes, though, the collection of orbital space telescopes, ground-based arrays, and interplanetary spacecraft comes across something that’s a bit of a head-scratcher.
Meet the latest: the millimeter ultra-wide line object, or MUBLO for short.
Identified in a new article published last week in the Astrophysical diary lettersthe object in question lies near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, which the researchers say contains “tens of millions of solar masses of gas, a supermassive black hole, a tenth of the ongoing star formation in our Milky Way Galaxy, and a vast graveyard of stellar remains.”
Even though it is a cosmic mess, it is one of the interstellar chaos where new celestial bodies will be discovered. the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) interferometer is one of the most powerful instruments in humanity’s stargazing arsenal. This array consists of 66 radio telescopes and can (as the name suggests) analyze electromagnetic radiation coming from space at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths.
While staring at the center of our Milky Way, researchers came across a compact source later named ‘G0.02467–0.0727’, also known as the MUBLO. The MUBLO, made of cold dust and fast-moving gas, also exhibited another strange behavior: it only emitted microwave radiation. Adam Ginsburgthe paper’s lead author, and his team went through the long list of heavenly explanations and came up short.
“We are considering several explanations for the [MUBLO], including protostellar outflow, explosive outflow, a collapsing cloud, an evolved star, a merger of stars, a high-velocity compact cloud, an intermediate-mass black hole, and a background galaxy,” the paper said. “Most of these conceptual models are inconsistent with the data or do not fully explain them. The MUBLO is currently an observationally unique object.”
According to Nature, the gas molecules also do not move in a simple ring, which could indicate that they were blown away by a stellar explosion. But the MUBLO lacks certain chemicals that could be signs of such an event.
Of the various celestial phenomena explored in the article, the authors highlight two could be explain the MUBLO: a stellar merger or an intermediate mass black hole (IMHO). However, none of these hypotheses are perfect. While the idea of stellar fusion is compelling, MUBLO “has a dust mass substantially larger, more than an order of magnitude, than observed in any other fusion remnant.” As for the IMHO suggestion, it “does not explain all of the observed features of the MUBLO.”
To understand this new phenomenon – or perhaps a well-disguised familiar object – future millimeter and mid-infrared studies will need to analyze the MUBLO and discern previously unseen features that will, hopefully, point towards what it is.
For now, add another galactic mystery to the list.
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