New hole found in the Milky Way- what does this point towards?

According to a recent study&nbsp;published&nbsp;in September&nbsp;in&nbsp;The Astrophysical Journal, astronomers have detected a huge gap in the Milky Way galaxy, between&nbsp;the constellations Perseus and Taurus. This gap between these star-forming regions is more of a hole.&nbsp;Also called a space cavity, the width of&nbsp;this gap&nbsp;is a whooping 500 light years. This discovery has made the scientist community take a step forward in understanding the formation of the universe and may also reveal how stars are created.&nbsp;&nbsp;



What did the scientists&nbsp;find?&nbsp; Reports revealed by astronomers suggest that this hole in the Milky Way was observed to be encompassed by molecular clouds, which could have been the result of the&nbsp;eruptive&nbsp;death of the star supernova&nbsp;around 10 million years ago.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Astrophysicists from the Institute of Theory and Computation (ITC), a branch of Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics (CfA),&nbsp;have stated that this new discovery could finally&nbsp;give them an idea about how stars are formed and whether&nbsp;or not&nbsp;the explosion of supernova is responsible for it.&nbsp;



Scientists from&nbsp;the&nbsp;European Space Agency have also revealed how their star-mapping spacecraft Gaia presented data that was in turn used to map molecular clouds that surround the hole. This, for the first time, gave the scientists community a clear 3D picture of&nbsp;Milky Way in contrast to the earlier used 2D&nbsp;view. This will help the researchers calculate the earth’s distance from the space cavity with almost 99% accurate results, which will in turn move them towards understanding the formation of stars.&nbsp;



How did they find the void?&nbsp; The scientists took the help of a software called Glue to view the data clearly, which in turn enabled them to formulate 3D molecular maps. These maps&nbsp;have the capacity to map the region where stars are created.&nbsp;&nbsp;



What will this discovery reveal?&nbsp; This new point of view will further advance research and allow&nbsp;scientists&nbsp;to study the formation of molecular clouds with dust and gases as a direct result of the supernova’s discharge – leading to the formation of new stars.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The 3D mapping technique will further reveal that&nbsp;the formerly discovered molecular clouds were not actually engulfing the void, but was in contrast disconnected and situated on the either side of the huge invisible hole.&nbsp;&nbsp;However, even though the clouds aren’t interlinked, they were also formed alongside the stars during the supernova explosion that happened 10 million years before.&nbsp;

Stars were formed due to the supernova explosion about 10 million years ago. 

A new-found hole in the Milky Way may reveal how stars are formed

Stars were formed due to the supernova explosion about 10 million years ago.

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