Nov 25 2010

Light Lensing and the Gamma Ray Bubbles

Published by at 11:52 am under Astrophysics

Something that needs to be considered relating to the size of the massive gamma ray emitting bubbles at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy is light lensing, – gravitational, and by many other wavelengths.  This is because light bends light.

Doug Finkbeiner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Harvard graduate students Meng Su and Tracy Slatyer “made the discovery while processing publicly available data from NASA’s Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT).” *  So as not to make assumptions, the three may have already considered light lensing, and the massive bubbles of the Milky Way may indeed be 50,000 light years across as published.  If not considered, on the other hand, the bubbles may be smaller than thought, though still quite massive.

As is already estimated by scientists, the bubbles volumetrically are mostly gas, with rocks, dust, stars, and other items intermixed in places.  If scientists are spectrum analyzing for the gaseous elements present, that will be very interesting and we can all look forward to the results.

* http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101110/sc_afp/usastronomy

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