Astronomers discover the largest structure in the Milky Way and it is located 55,000
lightyears away from Earth. Astronomers have given this monster structure the
name 'Maggie'.
Maggie is a massive hydrogen filament that is 3,900
light-years long (one light-year equals 5.87 trillion miles) and 130 lightyears
wide. It formed more than 13 billion years ago. The structure was analyzed by
an international group led by astronomers from the Max Planck Institute of
Astronomy (MPIA) using the European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia satellite.
Coauthor Juan Soler discovered the first clue to this
object a year ago and named it 'Maggie,' after Colombia's longest river, the Ro
Magdalena.
'Maggie was already recognizable in earlier
evaluations of the data. But only the current study proves beyond doubt that it
is a coherent structure,' Soler said in a statement. of the paper published in
the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. We don't yet know exactly how it got there.
But the filament extends about 1600 light-years below the Milky Way plane.'
As a result, the radiation from the hydrogen, which is
at a wavelength of eight inches, stands out clearly against the background,
making the filament visible. After a deeper analysis of Maggie, the team found
the gas converges at some points along the filament, which is likely areas
where the hydrogen accumulates and condenses into larger clouds.
The researchers also suspect that those are the
environments where the atomic gas gradually changes into a molecular form.