Aliens !
Oz stargazers serve up interstellar noodles
Stargazers from Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) have recorded the effect of interstellar gas "lenses", which interfere with quasar radio wave emissions. Described as dark "'lumps' in the thin gas that lies between the stars in our galaxy", these structures were first hinted at …
COMMENTS
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Friday 22nd January 2016 13:53 GMT Brewster's Angle Grinder
Denuding scare quotes leaves you an illegal bareward token
...the thin interstellar atmosphere...
It's the interstellar medium; not an atmosphere. The press release includes scare quotes ("They figured out this behaviour was the work of our Galaxy’s invisible ‘atmosphere’...") to keep us pedants happy.
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Friday 22nd January 2016 19:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
Interesting stuff
It's interesting because if the radio waves from the quasar are "varying wildly in strength" it suggests that whatever is causing the variations has high density/intensity but, at the same time, the variations are relatively rapid, suggesting that whatever is causing the variations is also either relatively small, at least at astronomical scales, or very big and moving very, very quickly indeed.
I wouldn't have thought that interstellar gas lenses fit either scenario very well; if the variations in the lenses are small enough to match the rate of variation then it's difficult to see how they could be intense enough to produce the degree of variation but, on the other hand, if they were large and moving quickly then they'd be interacting with other interstellar gas and radiating on their own.