Something Is Glowing in The Middle of The Milky Way Galaxy

 

imagine only leaving the porch light on  but having it illuminate your whole  street  makes no sense right well this is  what's happening in the center of the  milky way galaxy  only we don't know how or why  welcome to fact nominal and we're going  detective  on a strange mystery in something is  glowing  in the middle of the milky way galaxy  scientists that operate the fermi gamma  ray telescope in its low earth orbit  have confirmed that yes the numbers just  don't add up  they reported their findings in the  astrophysical journal  outlining a few possible reasons for the  excess of light  far too bright to be generated by the  stars and celestial bodies in that area  most of the gamma rays in the milky way  galaxy are produced when  gas clouds between stars are hit with  cosmic radiation  the charged particles released after a  star dies  eventually going supernova and bursting  apart in an explosion of light  heat energy and radioactivity the  remainder comes from pulsars which emit  a steady and diffused  gamma-ray glow that extends out through  the galaxy  so who's the main culprit manipulating  the meter  getting all that free power the likely  suspect is one that  we seem to lump everything we can't  understand on  dark matter it's almost like shooting  fish in a barrel every time  something is inexplicable just blame it  on be inexplicable and call it a day  it's easy to attribute a natural  phenomenon on  an unnatural phenomenon that we can  either see detect or  confirm the presence of after all we  understand gravity at only a fundamental  level  for all we know dark matter may just be  an error in the gravitational equations  relative to the mass  in our universe then again a large cloud  of dark matter continuously colliding  with itself and shooting off gamma  radiation in every direction  isn't the most far-fetched explanation  either  but you'd have to rule out all other  suspects before fingering dark matter as  the culprit  another answer could be a particularly  large population of high-energy  rapidly rotating neutron stars these  weird amigos are known as pulsars  and are actually the core of a star that  has collapsed  in on itself after the outer layers have  exploded into a supernova  the intense gravity is so great that  atomic bombs are ripped apart and  protons and electrons are squeezed  together to form neutrons  these crazy cats have incredibly strong  magnetic fields which constantly change  poles causing the neutron star to rotate  at speeds of over 43  000 miles per second that's a quarter  the speed of light  this results in a beam of  electromagnetic radiation in the form of  gamma rays being emitted  and broadcast out into the great yonder  still  pulsars don't explain the excess of  light and radiation permeating out from  the center of the milky way  there is a third option lurking in our  galaxy's center is sagittarius a  a supermassive black hole four million  times the mass of our sun  all jam-packed into an area roughly the  size of earth's orbit  it whips the surrounding stars around it  at millions of miles an hour  and obliterates any asteroids that get  too close for comfort from sheer  gravitational force  currently it's acting much more  violently than usual  this flare-up is causing the surrounding  material to flash twice as bright as  usual  the supermassive black hole itself  doesn't emit light  it eats it but the clouds of gas  surrounding it called fermi bubbles  are dragged so fast into the gravity  heavy center  that photons are sprayed out into the  rest of the milky way like bullets  statistical tests have shown that  experiencing just four consecutive  nights of this brightness  has a chance of one in two thousand  given saj's baseline behavior over the  last decade  more matters screaming towards the black  hole  the more gamma emitted which makes sense  only the numbers still don't add up  could be dark matter collisions  could be undetectable pulsars or  supermassive black holes snapping one of  its magnetic fields who knows  what do you think is causing our galaxy  to glow  do you think physicists are right about  the characteristics of supermassive  black holes  or are we just guessing let us know in  the comments  if you enjoyed this article or learned  something new today  hit that like button make sure you  subscribe with notifications enabled  so you never miss another amazing space  article