Snakes On A Plane 2006

Galactic Snakes On Our Galactic Plane? What NASA’s Newest Images Reveal

“The center of our galaxy houses some of the most interesting physical and astrophysical phenomena around, and yet it’s maddeningly difficult to observe. From within our own Milky Way, observing other locations is tremendously difficult because of all the intervening matter in the way. Neutral gas, dust grains, and ionized plasmas not only can block a significant fraction of the light we’re interested in, but they also emit their own light. As the old saying goes, however, one astronomer’s noise is another astronomer’s data.

By leveraging high-resolution radio and X-ray images of the central region of the galaxy together, we can finally identify the long sought-after radio filaments that showcase these strong magnetic features in our galaxy, and they match up exquisitely with X-ray emission as well. The magnetic reconnection events that likely underlie them are the first direct evidence we have for the theoretical prediction that solar flare analogues should exist in our galaxy, driven by the hot young star clusters found in the galactic center. With more research, astronomers now hope to learn how cosmic rays accelerate, hot plasma heats up to even greater temperatures, and how turbulence arises in these extreme environments. The high energy galaxy, with both radio and X-ray data combined, just got a lot cooler and hotter in tandem.”

There’s been a new image of the galactic center that’s gone viral recently, and that’s great! But wouldn’t you like to know about the science behind it? I bet you would!

Just remembered that Coheed was on the Snakes on a Plane soundtrack and I’m still not over that