possible alien particle accelerator found 20 lightyears away

news.bbc.co.uk...

Astronomers have discovered a loop-like structure some 20 light-years across close to the centre of the Milky Way. And the team that found it believes the vast, bizarre structure could be some form of cosmic particle accelerator.

The loop may produce sub-atomic particles with a thousand times more energy than those in man-made accelerators.Details were presented at the National Astronomy Meeting in Birmingham.

The loop was seen using the European space telescope XMM-Newton to study it in X-ray wavelengths.The galactic centre can only be observed at certain wavelengths - such as X-rays - because large amounts of dust lie in our line of sight, blocking out optical light.

"The X-ray spectrum of the loop is extraordinary," said Dr Masaaki Sakano of the University of Leicester.

Most diffuse X-ray sources in the Universe have a characteristic temperature because they represent the residual radiation from an event, such as a supernova.

"The loop has no characteristic temperature, so there is probably some ongoing process in there - that is our interpretation," Dr Sakano told the BBC News website.

"There are large amounts of high energy particles, so we interpret that they are being accelerated at the moment." If this is so, the loop could be generating high-energy particles with an energy of up to one thousand trillion electron volts.

Particles such as these have been detected previously in supernova remnants and pulsar nebulae. But they have never been detected in star-forming regions of the Universe. The researchers saw the loop when looking at the Arches Cluster, a star-forming region close to the Milky Way's centre. But it is not known whether the loop structure is physically associated with the Arches Cluster or just happens to be in the same line of sight.

[Edited for clarity]

[edit on 10/4/05 by JAK]

that certainly is bizarre that they would call it a 'structure' rather than a shape. that implies something along the lines of the manufactured particle accelerators like CERN than something like a smoke ring which can occur naturally. definately worth watching out for what it actually is

This an amazing find.

Probably should have submitted it as a news article, or under space exploration.
The same article is posted on several sites, like SpaceDaily.

I'm guessing scientists believe this is a natural formation. Was this posted under Aliens, because it was possibly constructed by them?
Unfortunately, there is no mention of aliens.

I wonder if this is close to the same region that those galactic bursts came from.
www.abovetopsecret.com...



[edit on 4/10/2005 by Hal9000]

I second that, its like assuming that Gamma Ray Burst is alien gamma laser weapon to destroy life on other planets in other solarsystems. Actually with grand scale giga engineering one could construct a tunable gamma laser pump[ed by a black hole, but nature can create some random lasers by itselve without alien assistence....

As this phenomena is observed near the center of the galaxy, it wouldnt surprise me if it turned out the central supermassive black hole play some part in this cosmic merry go round...

Given the sheer vast scale of the universe, you will find the most impressive and odd combinations of structures and physics interactions, like the "particle accelerator" ridge on Iapetus, wich is probalby just another natural phenomena, with a geometric structure that has an artificial look and feel...



[edit on 10-4-2005 by Silenus]