The supernova explosion may have created a hole in the universe.
ESO / SpaceEngine / L. Way
There is a big hole in the universe. Long ago, a star exploded with great force and destroyed everything in its path. It even sweeps tiny particles of space dust out of its way – but in a sudden event, the space dust collects, collapses and eventually gives birth to a cluster of tiny stars.
As the saying goes, it is a circle of life.
said lead author Shmuel Bialy, an astrophysicist at the Institute for Theory and Computing at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
The story begins with a spherical void several million years old and 500 light-years wide that lurks in outer space. To be clear, this completely empty cavity is quite large. One Light years It’s about 6 trillion miles (9 trillion kilometers), which means the void can hold 150,000 copies of our solar system inside.
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Mysterious and surprising-looking cavities like these are sometimes found in the universe. It was just a gaping hole in empty space. But because astronomers usually study space in two dimensions – with spectral data, or even photographs – it is difficult to find three-dimensional structures. Even when astronomers found it, it was difficult to understand what was going on.
“There was a lot of confusion along the line of sight,” said Bialy. “You don’t know the distance, so sometimes we look at different structures and it looks like it’s just one structure – or vice versa.”
The Bialy team solves problems by harnessing a new power: augmented reality.
They created mini versions of giant portable cavities in space, as well as the objects that surround them. Then they play with their models in real time to unlock the elusive secrets of the void. A QR Code For works included in their paper, published Wednesday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. There are also YouTube demo.
Basically, you can download the reconstructed room to your phone and feel like you are in your room. “It’s like a movie where you have a 3D image,” says Bialy.
While scanning their digital sculpture for research purposes—as opposed to the trivial pleasure I had while rotating the display on a coffee table—the team noticed an unusual “shell” of material around a symmetrical and lonely area: a giant cavity.
They concluded that a stellar explosion about 10 million years old – or several stellar explosions in that time period – pushed particles away in the vicinity, causing the space dust capsule to surround an uninhabited region of space.
“Imagine… you have a lot of dust from the ground,” Bialy explained. “You have a large room, and you only sweep dust into one area – now, in this area… you have a much higher density of dust.”
When space dust clumps, it is known that it will collapse more easily and compress itself. But perhaps the most surprising discovery was that two famous clouds, Perseus and Taurus, which show stars as small as star plants, live in the dust crust.
“Traditionally it was thought that they were just two independent clouds,” Biali said. “Now with the 3D view and discovery of these cavities, we understand that they most likely formed together by the supernova explosion that preceded them.”
This means that stellar explosions can set off a chain reaction that ultimately leads to the formation of their offspring.
“I wouldn’t say this is the only way to form a star-forming cloud, but it is a viable method,” Bialy said.
An enlarged cavity image (left) shows the Perseus and Taurus molecular clouds in blue and red, respectively.
Alyssa Goodman / Astrophysics Center | Harvard and Smithsonian.
The entire Bialy project initially started as a test of the Perseus molecular cloud only. Researchers are trying to understand the formation of stars and fissures in small regions of space in two dimensions. While looking at the photos, they began to see small “shells” inside Perseus.
So, they start to shrink…and then again…and again.
“We’ve expanded the map,” explained Biali. “We started seeing bigger and bigger shells until, finally, this huge shell.”
Apart from encouraging the public to see the magic for themselves, by scanning a QR code and exploring the model, Bialy said, the team also released their digital data to the public. This ensures transparency so that anyone can try to draw the same conclusions the team made, but from scratch, if they so desire.
Along with exciting discoveries about how stars and stellar clouds are produced, Bialy asserts that the use of new perspectives and methodologies in astrophysics could pave the way for the subject’s future.
“I just do science,” says Bialy. “Suddenly, I was working with this augmented reality company and an animator and a different person.”
Augmented reality, in particular, promises a richer library of scientific literature. Instead of a thick collection of encyclopedias, we turned to digital holograms that can be called at will.
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