The bizarre gas cloud is one of the Milky Way's longest formations

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In both its size and substance, it's a unique specimen.

Astronomers have discovered a strange hydrogen cloud, which may be the Milky Way's longest-ever structure.

The gigantic structure, which is more than 3,900 light-years long and around 150 light-years wide, is located roughly 55,000 light-years away from the solar system, according to a statement by researchers. In the past, the largest known gas clouds in the Milky Way were estimated to measure roughly 800 light-years across.) Maggie, short for Colombia's longest river, was given a name by the researchers because of its length.

Discovered as part of a scan of the Milky Way's HI/OH/Recombination line (THOR). Astronomers using data from a radio observatory in New Mexico are looking for objects outside the Milky Way's main plane. On this flattened disk, most of the galaxy's stuff is located. Maggie's location outside the plane made it simpler to see the building than it would have been otherwise.

Jonas Syed, a Ph.D. student at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, said in a statement, "We don't yet know exactly how it got there." There are around 1,600 light-years below the plane of the Milky Way in the filament [gas cloud]." There are no major obstructions to seeing the hydrogen's radiation this way.

In part because of this isolation, scientists could determine the gas's velocity within Maggie. They discovered that all the gas was traveling in the same direction and at the same pace, proving that the cloud was a single unit, not a collection of smaller ones.

The MPIA's Juan Soler, who discovered Maggie, said in a statement, "Maggie was already recognizable in earlier examinations of the data." This work, however, is the first to show conclusively that it is a cohesive structure.

A special kind of hydrogen makes Maggie different from other gas clouds in size and composition. Molecular hydrogen, H2, is a type of hydrogen with two hydrogen atoms bound together, whereas atomic hydrogen, H, is a single hydrogen atom. When it comes to hydrogen cloud formation in space, molecular hydrogen is the most common form. But Maggie's atomic hydrogen content of 92 percent makes it extremely interesting to scientists.

It's common for stars to develop from clouds of molecular hydrogen that are dense enough to collapse under the gravitational pull. The transition from atomic clouds to molecular clouds, one of the most perplexing aspects of star formation, is still a mystery. Scientists assume that many of these molecular hydrogen clouds were once composed of atomic hydrogen.

The molecular hydrogen in Maggie's cloud makes up around 8% of the total and appears to be concentrated in a few spots. As a result, scientists believe that Maggie is in the process of becoming a molecular gas cloud.

Hopefully, more research will yield more information on what is taking place.

Astronomy & Astrophysics journal published the paper online on Dec. 20, 2021.

Reference : https://www.livescience.com/longest-structure-in-milky-way

Image source : https://pixabay.com/id/photos/bima-sakti-bimasakti-galaksi-kosmos-6209352/

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