Astronomers Baffled by a Suspicious, Perfectly Round Sphere in Our Galaxy
Dubbed "Teleios" after the Greek word for "perfect," the object is what's known as a supernova remnant (SNR), a glowing cloud of hot gases and other material left behind after a massive star dies in a powerful explosion called a supernova.
And it's definitely earned its nickname. According to the astronomers' findings, as reported in a pre-print study accepted for publication in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, this is one of the most circular galactic SNRs ever found.
"The shape indicates Teleios has remained relatively untouched by its environment," said lead author Miroslav Filipovic, an astronomer at Western Sydney University, in an essay for The Conversation written with his colleagues earlier this year. "This presents us with an opportunity to make inferences about the initial supernova explosion, providing rare insight into one of the most energetic events in the universe."
When a star goes supernova, it blasts all that stellar material into space in a tremendous release of energy bright enough to momentarily outshine even entire galaxies.
The astronomers believe that Teleios is the result of a rare type of explosion — we're talking happening only once every 500 years in the Milky Way rare — called a type Ia supernova that occurs in binary star systems. When a smaller but far denser white dwarf siphons enough matter from its companion star whose orbit has crept too close, the stolen stellar material detonates in an epic thermonuclear explosion that obliterates both the stars.
For something so symmetrical to emerge out of an event so violent is unusual, to put it mildly.
"The supernova remnant will be deformed by its environment over time. If one side of the explosion slams into an interstellar cloud, we'll see a squashed shape," explained Filipovic in the essay. "So, a near-perfect circle in a messy universe is a special find."
Teleios was uncovered as part of the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) survey using the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), an enormous radio telescope that's proving to be a powerful tool for finding SNRs that aren't visible in other wavelengths. Teleios, exclusively seen at radio-continuum frequencies, is one of them. Along with its perfect shape, it has one of the lowest surface brightnesses among all known galactic SNRs.
The astronomers estimate that Teleios lies at a distance of either 2.2 or 7.7 kiloparsecs away (or approximately 7,100 or 25,100 light years). The uncertainty surrounding its distance means its age and size are hard to pin down, too. It's either on the younger side at less than 1,000 years old, or much older at over 10,000 years old. Likewise, it could be as small as 46 light years across, or as large as 157 light years.
In any case, their findings place Teleios at a stage of its evolution called the Sedov-Taylor phase, during which the expansion of the SNR first begins to slow down, as it sweeps up additional mass from the interstellar medium of space. There's a catch, though: this process should produce detectable x-ray emissions, but the astronomers haven't see any.
Maybe, the astronomers explored, Teleios is actually the remnant of an even rarer type of Ia supernova: a type Iax, in which the white dwarf partially survives as "zombie star." In that case, Teleios might be much closer at less than 3,200 light years away while being about 10.7 light years across.
No hard answer, however, can be made from the data we have now. But this is just the beginning, and the astronomers are optimistic that more detailed observations in the future will one day help put this mystery to bed.
More on stars: NASA's James Webb Telescope Just Found Frozen Water Around Another Star
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
How did cockroaches survive the asteroid that led to the extinction of dinosaurs?
Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you'd like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@ How did cockroaches survive the asteroid that led to the extinction of dinosaurs? – Kinjal, age 11, Delhi, India When the rock now known as the Chicxulub impactor plummeted from outer space and slammed into the Earth 66 million years ago, cockroaches were there. The impact caused a massive earthquake, and scientists think it also triggered volcanic eruptions thousands of miles from the impact site. Three-quarters of plants and animals on Earth died, including all dinosaurs, except for some species that were ancestors of today's birds. How could roaches a couple of inches long survive when so many powerful animals went extinct? It turns out that they were nicely equipped to live through a meteoric catastrophe. If you've ever seen a cockroach, you've probably noticed that their bodies are very flat. This is not an accident. Flatter insects can squeeze themselves into tighter places. This enables them to hide practically anywhere – and it may have helped them survive the Chicxulub impact. When the meteor struck, temperatures on Earth's surface skyrocketed. Many animals had nowhere to flee, but roaches could take shelter in tiny soil crevices, which provide excellent protection from heat. The meteor's impact triggered a cascade of effects. It kicked up so much dust that the sky darkened. As the sun dimmed, temperatures plunged and conditions became wintry around the globe. With little sunlight, surviving plants struggled to grow, and many other organisms that relied on those plants went hungry. Not cockroaches, though. Unlike some insects that prefer to eat one specific plant, cockroaches are omnivorous scavengers. This means they will eat most foods that come from animals or plants as well as cardboard, some kinds of clothing and even poop. Having appetites that aren't picky has allowed cockroaches to survive lean times since the Chicxulub extinction and other natural disasters. Another helpful trait is that cockroaches lay their eggs in little protective cases. These egg cartons look like dried beans and are called oothecae, which means 'egg cases.' Like phone cases, oothecae are hard and protect their contents from physical damage and other threats, such as flooding and drought. Some cockroaches may have waited out part of the Chicxulub catastrophe from the comfort of their oothecae. Modern cockroaches are little survivors that can live just about anywhere on land, from the heat of the tropics to some of the coldest parts of the globe. Scientists estimate that there over 4,000 cockroach species. A handful of these species like to live with humans and quickly become pests. Once cockroaches become established in a building, it's hard to rid every little crack of these insects and their oothecae. When large numbers of roaches are present in unsanitary places, they can spread diseases. The biggest threat they pose to human health is from allergens they produce that can trigger asthma attacks and allergic reactions in some people. Cockroach pests are hard to manage because they can resist many chemical insecticides and because they have the same abilities that helped their ancestors outlive many dinosaurs. Still, cockroaches are much more than a pest to control. Researchers study cockroaches to understand how they move and how their bodies are designed to get ideas for building better robots. As a scientist, I see all insects as beautiful, six-legged inspirations. Cockroaches have already overcome odds that were too great for dinosaurs. If another meteorite hit the Earth, I'd be more worried for humans than for cockroaches. Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you'd like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@ Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live. And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you're wondering, too. We won't be able to answer every question, but we will do our best. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Brian Lovett, West Virginia University Read more: To help insects, make them welcome in your garden – here's how Why are moths attracted to light? The invasive emerald ash borer has destroyed millions of trees – scientists aim to control it with tiny parasitic wasps Brian Lovett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Yahoo
For 100 years, we have marveled at planetariums. Here's a brief history of how humans brought the stars indoors
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Picture this: a small audience is quietly ushered into a darkened room. They gasp in awe, as a brilliant night sky shines above. They wonder – as many after them will do – what trickery has made the roof above their heads disappear? But this is a performance; the stars above an ingenious projection. For the first time a public audience has experienced the spectacle of the opto-mechanical planetarium. The location is the newly opened Deutsches Museum in Munich, built to celebrate science and technology. The date is May 7 1925. Throughout time, cultures around the world have used the stars to help make sense of the world, to understand where we come from and determine our place in the cosmos. People have tried to recreate the movements of the stars and planets since antiquity. In the 1700s, the orrery, a clockwork model of the Solar System, was developed. The word 'planetarium' was invented to describe orreries that featured the planets. One room-sized orrery example was built by the self-taught Frisian astronomer Eise Eisinga. It's still operational today in Franeker, Netherlands. No human has ever been to the edge of the Solar System to see this view. Orreries, and other mechanical models of the universe like celestial globes, present views from impossible, external perspectives. The desire for a realistic view of the stars and planets, created from a perspective we actually see, gathered pace in the early 20th century as light pollution from growing cities diminished the view of the night sky. People like Oskar von Miller, first director of the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany, wanted to return this vision of the stars and planets to everyone. (Ironically, von Miller's earlier career was as an electrical engineer, rolling out the city lighting that contributed to light pollution.) One early attempt to create this view of the night sky was the Atwood Sphere, installed in Chicago in 1913. Approximately five metres across, it was made of sheet metal perforated with a star map. When viewed from the inside, the light shining through 692 pinholes replicated the Chicago night sky. The whole structure could even be rotated to simulate the motion of the stars. A realistic display of the stars is one thing. Representing the planets, whose positions in the sky change from night to night, is a different one. Von Miller and others at the Deutsches Museum knew that fixed holes could not represent the complexity of a moving planet. What if the planets were displayed by projection? If so, couldn't the stars be projected, as well? With this realization, a new kind of planetarium was born, borrowing the name from earlier orreries but working in a completely different way. The task of building such a device was given to the German optical company Carl Zeiss AG. After many setbacks, their first planetarium projector was completed in 1923, with the first performance at the Deutsches Museum a century ago today. Planetariums were a hit with the public. Within decades, they had spread around the world – the first planetarium in the United States opened in Chicago in 1930, while the first one in Asia opened in Osaka, Japan in 1937. The popularity of planetariums particularly accelerated in the US during the space race of the 1960s. Australia's oldest operating planetarium is the Melbourne Planetarium, managed by Museums Victoria since 1965. In Aotearoa New Zealand, Auckland's Stardome Observatory has been in operation since 1997. The current longest-running planetarium in the southern hemisphere is in Montevideo, Uruguay, operational since 1955. The opto-mechanical planetarium projector remains a technological wonder of the modern world. Individual plates, perforated with pinholes, are illuminated by a bright central light. Separate lenses focus each projection from one of these star maps to fill the entire dome with about 5,000 stars. The Sun, Moon and planets have separate projectors driven by gears and rods that mechanically calculate the object's position in the sky for any time or place. The opto-mechanical planetarium projector remains a technological wonder of the modern world. Individual plates, perforated with pinholes, are illuminated by a bright central light. Separate lenses focus each projection from one of these star maps to fill the entire dome with about 5,000 stars. The Sun, Moon and planets have separate projectors driven by gears and rods that mechanically calculate the object's position in the sky for any time or place. By the 1990s, a digital revolution had begun. With the advent of computers, the positions of the planets could now be calculated digitally. The Melbourne Planetarium became the first digital planetarium in the southern hemisphere when it installed the Digistar II in 1999. This system, developed by computer graphics company Evans and Sutherland, replaced the multiple lenses of earlier projectors with a fisheye lens. A single beam of light swept across the whole dome so rapidly that it seemed to create a single image – albeit in a bizarre green color, rendering a starfield of fuzzy green blobs. The trade-off for a less crisp starfield was a 3D database with more than 9,000 stars. For the first time, planetarium audiences could fly through space, far beyond the edge of the Solar System. Planetarium technology continues to develop. Today, most planetariums operate through video projection. Known as fulldome, the output from multiple projectors is blended together to create a seamless video, transforming the planetarium into a sophisticated 360-degree theatre. Astronomy has also changed over the last century. Just as Zeiss was completing its first projector, astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that other galaxies exist beyond our Milky Way galaxy. The stars shown on the dome in Munich in 1925 turned out to be just a tiny part of the universe that we know today. Planetariums' digital systems now incorporate data from telescopes and space agencies around the world. Audiences can fly off Earth, orbit the planets and moons of the Solar System, and explore the billions of known galaxies. Yet some things have not changed. From orreries and lantern slides to opto-mechanical and digital planetariums, the communication of astronomy has always been about more than just the latest results of science. The power of the planetarium over the last 100 years has been its ability to evoke wonder and awe. It taps into our enduring fascination with the vast mystery of the night sky. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Buzz Feed
2 days ago
- Buzz Feed
The Odyssey Teaser: Everything You Need To Know
If you're someone who cares about movies, there is every reason to be very, very, very excited for Christopher Nolan's next film. Off the back of Oppenheimer — which won seven Oscars in March 2024, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director — Nolan is returning with yet another ambitious blockbuster, adapting Homer's classic, The Odyssey. So, what is it all about? If you're familiar with the epic poem, you'll know that bringing The Odyssey to the big screen Nolan-style will be quite the undertaking. The story, which is dated around 750-650 BC and split between 24 books, follows the king of Ithaca, Odysseus, as he travels home after the Trojan War. On his journey, he encounters many perils as he battles mythical creatures and faces the wrath of the Greek gods. Simultaneously, Odysseus's wife, Penelope, and their son, Telemachus, endure their own challenges as they await his return to the throne. And if that doesn't sound exciting enough already, just wait until you hear who's in the cast. Who's going to be in it? Matt Damon will play Odysseus, Telemachus will be played by Tom Holland, and it's been speculated that Anne Hathaway will be playing Penelope. In February, Universal unveiled the first official image from the film, showing Matt as Odysseus in his Gladiator-esque armor. The other significant characters include Circe, the goddess of sorcery (played by Charlize Theron), the Greek goddess Athena, and Poseidon, the god of the sea, storms, and earthquakes. Other actors set to appear in The Odyssey include Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong'o, Elliot Page, Himesh Patel, Benny Safdie, John Leguizamo, Mia Goth, Corey Hawkins, Bill Irwin, Samantha Morton, Jesse Garcia, Will Yun Lee, and Cosmo Jarvis. Right now, we don't have confirmation as to what characters everyone is playing. Speaking to Variety in late June, Charlize said she was preparing to fly out to start shooting her scenes for the movie. 'It's super intimidating. I'm like the last one to show up,' she said. 'I'll be like the new kid on the block, and everybody will know what they're doing and not me.' Where are they in production? And when's it actually coming out? Filming has been underway since early 2025, taking place in locations such as Morocco, Greece, Sicily, and Iceland. It will be the first movie shot entirely with IMAX cameras, and since filming began, fans have been poring over each new batch of paparazzi pictures from the set — many of which see Matt Damon looking extremely ripped and rather beardy. Most recently, the Martian star and his Odysseus beard were spotted shooting with Nolan in Scotland. Now for the bad news…The Odyssey isn't hitting theaters until July 17, 2026. But, even though we've got a year to wait, I'm pleased to announce that, in true Nolan style, the Oscar-winning director has given fans a preview of the action with the first official poster and a dramatic new teaser. Where did the teaser come from, and what does it include? For context, the 70-second teaser began showing exclusively in theaters on July 1. However, if you were scrolling on X or TikTok that afternoon, you may have come across some leaked footage filmed in cinemas. (We do not condone filming in the movie theater!! Have some class!) Most of the leaked clips were swiftly taken down, and it is currently unclear whether Universal plans to release the teaser online. So, for those who haven't caught it yet, here's a summary of what the footage begins with a sprawling shot of the ocean paired with some narration from someone who sounds like it could be R-Patz. 'Darkness. Zeus' laws smashed to pieces. A kingdom without a king since my master died. He knew it was an unwinnable war, and then somehow…somehow he won it,' he says, as the camera cuts to two different shots of what is presumably the Trojan Horse, which Odysseus uses to smuggle Greek soldiers into Troy and win the war. We then get our first bit of onscreen acting in the form of a tense conversation between Tom Holland as Telemachus and a character played by Jon Bernthal. We don't know yet who Jon is playing, but in the scene, Telemachus, with tears streaming down his face, asks: 'I have to find out what happened to my father. When did you last see him?' In response, Jon's character says, 'Interested in rumor, huh? Gossip,' before yelling to the people around them, 'Who has a story about Odysseus, huh? You!? You have a story!?'This is followed by what appears to be our first look at Matt in action as an armored-up Odysseus. The shot shows a group of soldiers from behind as they walk through dark city streets holding torches. Words on a blank screen read: 'One Year From Now,' alluding to the film's release in July 2026. Another long shot shows a man in armor, presumably Odysseus, wielding his sword as he enters a cave, followed by other soldiers. Over the top of the visuals, Jon's character continues: 'Some say he's rich, or some say he's poor. Some say he perished. Some say he's imprisoned. What say you?' Telemachus replies, 'Imprisoned?''What kind of prison? Good, old man like that,' Jon's character scoffs before we get a foreboding shot of Odysseus stranded at sea, lying on some scraps of wood in the middle of the dark ocean. 'The Odyssey' and '17. 07. 26' appear on screen one after another, and the teaser concludes. What were the initial reactions from fans? Well, with so much anticipation surrounding the movie, it's fair to say that the reception online was very positive. 'The slice of Christopher Nolan's THE ODYSSEY is extremely promising honing in on a mythical aura of a cinematic Greek tragedy surrounded by an ominous choral soundscape and lush world building, Tom Holland and Jon Bernthal feel right in their element! I'm ready for the Gods!' one X user continued: 'The Odyssey footage was hypnotizing, honing in on gruesome acoustic landscapes and stretching visuals that don't even cover the scope of Christopher Nolan's cinematic vision, the emotional story led by a vulnerable Tom Holland feels set. Divine and mythical!''I saw The Odyssey teaser, holy shit it bangs. Tom Holland bout to make some people real silent, amazing acting in the short footage we see,' wrote someone else, garnering over 30,000 likes as they praised Tom's brief performance in the teaser.'It was absolutely worth it to wait until I could watch THE ODYSSEY teaser on the big screen,' another user said, calling it 'grandiose, epic, and perhaps the most foreboding out of any recent Nolan teaser.' 'Next summer can't get here quick enough.'Some have been critical of the decision to have the actors use American accents, despite the story being an ancient Greek story. But we'll just have to wait and see how it pans out. So, there you have it. The countdown is on. Could this be the sequel to Oppenheimer's 2024 Oscars sweep? Only time will tell...
