back to article Pew, pew, pew! Our galaxy is shooting cold, gaseous 'bullets' of high-speed matter. Boffins are baffled

The Milky Way is shooting blobs of never-before-seen cold, dense gas from its center – and astronomers have no idea how or why, according to a paper published in Nature. Hundreds of gas clouds carrying hydrogen and helium float above and below the middle of the galactic plane. Scientists led by the Australian National …

  1. Tom 7

    Blobs?

    Barney McGroblets shirley!

  2. not.known@this.address

    Either someone's firing up the stardrive, or...

    Hastur? Hastur? Is there a Hastur in the house?

    Oh, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu <<CARRIER LOST>>

    1. EagleZ28

      Re: Either someone's firing up the stardrive, or...

      Maybe the black hole had something to do with the Darkover?

  3. Jan 0 Silver badge
    Alien

    Incoming?

    Perhaps we should look at what's being shot at? Will they stop it in time, can we hide from it, or do we need to move to a different galaxy?

  4. Sgt_Oddball
    Gimp

    Ugh.... What a dirty galaxy..

    Firing off mysterious matter left, right and centre...

    I bet you the other galaxies are watching too... The perverts..

    Gimp icon for protection against this galactic matter.

  5. Neil Barnes Silver badge
    Boffin

    it gets more complicated the more we learn about it

    That;s why we pay scientists boffins, no?

  6. riffrafff
    Coat

    Misspelling

    Ferengi Bubbles.

    1. spold Silver badge

      Re: Misspelling

      Indeed... The Sun headline... Ferengi Bubbles in ANU's fart bullet shocker

  7. Munchausen's proxy
    Pint

    To be expected

    Once John Conway moved to a higher plane.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Scavenger hunt

    OK, so you've found matter being shot out of the center of a galaxy where the black hole is, congratulations, but what other impossible amazing things you can find if you go look.

    So now go find a galaxy tumbling with respect to the universe while maintaining its structure.

    How common are they? *Every* galaxy is doing that, but you'll need to find one that's moving fast enough to observe.

    Bonus points, for breaking everyone's model with an impossible find.

    Holy Grail bonus points, if you find one and calculate the outer stars are moving faster than light as they tumble.

    1. Spherical Cow Silver badge

      Re: Scavenger hunt

      Faster than light? No. Just no.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        3 dimensional space denial...

        That's the point, do the calculation with your existing model, get an impossible number, realize there's a problem with the model you have. Twiddle with the model to add an exception ^h^h^h^h^h say "that's interesting" and rethink the model afresh based on the full set of new observations without preconditions.

        Still on my scavenger hunt list: Find symmetric anomalies relative to the observer. So look one way, find a +ve anomaly (e.g. a tiny shift in an emission line) go to the other side of the planet, look the opposite way and find the -ve anomaly. To be seeing a universe wide effect like that, we would have to be in the center of the universe for it to be symmetrical relative to us observers here on earth, which is ridiculously unlikely. It's our motion over the universe field.

        Group the effects, how many axis do you have? 1?2?3?4?.... I know there is already the background radiation anomaly (3 such axis, Google [Axis of evil cosmology]), but that's been dismissed as measurement/analysis error, but you should be able to find it in everything. The axis' you find, they're not at right angles to each other right? They're not independent right?

        Also I still want periodicity in this matter emission (~aka the wobble). Imagine the black hole wobbling and spinning, what does the wobble look like? Simple? Complex? How many harmonics? Can you analyse the harmonics from the bubbles, which I assume are at the limits of the wobble?

        For our outer enclosing blackhole it is one harmonics, but are there blackholes that are 2, 3, 4?

        You see where I'm going with this.

        Why are there 3 dimensions?

        Are there always 3 dimensions in all universes?

        Will there always be 3 dimensions for us or can it change dimensionality?

        Are 3-space dimensions actually independent or have we just built our local physics model erroneously that way?

  9. ghp

    "We're still looking for the smoking gun", funny he should say that. As a flemish saying goes: "if it had been a little dog, it would have bitten him already".

  10. Claptrap314 Silver badge
    Alien

    Different subject, but...

    Of all of the galaxies we've observed, have we seen any evidence of a type 2.5 civilization?

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