Astronomers Are Reporting About A Huge “Invisible Structures” In The Milky Way

First a new planet now THIS?

You read the headline correctly and it surprised us too.  Apparently this has been quite a week for astronomy.  First two scientists from Caltech darn near proved that there is another unseen planet at the edge of the solar system.  Now, a different group says they’ve spotted some unusual objects in our galaxy:

Astronomers think they may have found giant “invisible” structures lurking in the Milky Way. These things seem to be pretty big – roughly the size of Earth’s orbit around the Sun – and they could help to explain where a bunch of missing matter in the universe is, known as the missing baryon problem.

The detection of these structures was made by astronomers working at the CSIRO’s Compact Array telescope in eastern Australia. Although previous research had hinted at their presence before, this new paper – published in the journal Science – helps to constrain their size and shape a bit better.

Don’t think these are big, solid objects though. Essentially, the structures appear to be large clumps of some sort of material, possibly clouds of cool gas, in the existing thin gas that lies between stars. And they appear to be in odd shapes. The astronomers described them as looking like hollow “noodles” or hazelnuts – with material on the outside and a hollow center. Some may even be sheet-like, and we could be looking at them edge-on.

What do you think these are?  Feel free to comment with your ideas and check back for updates on this story.

thanks to iflscience.com for the great info

Here is a brief update on the BUZZ from Caltech.  It is hard to even fathom something like this:

Today, two scientists announced evidence that a body nearly the size of Neptune—but as yet unseen—orbits the sun every 15,000 years. During the solar system’s infancy 4.5 billion years ago, they say, the giant planet was knocked out of the planet-forming region near the sun. Slowed down by gas, the planet settled into a distant elliptical orbit, where it still lurks today.

The new evidence comes from a pair of respected planetary scientists, Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, who prepared for the inevitable skepticism with detailed analyses of the orbits of other distant objects and months of computer simulations.

Is this crazy or what!!

This video shows some graphics about the potential orbit should this planet exist.  Whatever is there, assuming it orbits the sun would take something like 15,000 Earth years.  Can you get your mind around that?  Feel free to comment on what you think this is. Just a heads up this particular video is a bit more “out there” in vantage point.

thanks to sciencemag.org for the great info

And if you would like to see a video on the most Earth like exoplanet ever found 

It seems as if the last year has been a record for NASA in terms of new discoveries.  Although the new planet video from the previous page was potentially discovered by Caltech, NASA has done the most research in this area.  Kepler 452-b will be getting more attention as they think it might have an Earth-like atmosphere.