![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/The-Galactic-Plane-field-appears-over-Mellingers-full-sky-Milky-Way-image-with-the-Galactic-equator-.webp\")
The Galactic Plane field appears over Mellinger\u2019s full-sky Milky Way image, with the Galactic equator shown as a dashed aqua line. Credit: The Astrophysical Journal <\/p>\n
As stated by Tom Maccarone<\/a>, a physicist at Texas Tech University who collaborated on the study:<\/p>\n this kind of detection shows \u201ca great example of the adage among astronomers that opening new windows on the universe produces new, unexpected, exciting results.\u201d<\/p>\n Flares Lasted One Day, Seen Only In Millimeter Wavelengths<\/p>\n Each flare lasted about 24 hours and came from known binary systems where a white dwarf <\/a>is drawing matter from a companion star, forming an accretion disk. The disk, made of hot, swirling gas, can suddenly release energy in bursts.<\/p>\n The research team noted that the events likely came from magnetic reconnection, a process also seen in solar flares. Here, it occurs in a far more extreme setting, with dense material and higher energies. These are some of the first such events observed in millimeter light, where transient discoveries are still rare. Before now, most flare-type variability had been seen in optical or X-ray bands, not in this quieter portion of the spectrum.<\/p>\n The researchers had not been specifically watching these stars when the flares occurred. Instead, they used wide-area, repeated scans, making the find serendipitous. As Maccarone explained, this approach may reveal many more such events in the future, since \u201cwe\u2019ve only scratched the surface of what can be done\u201d with this method.<\/p>\n Disk-Driven High-Energy Flares<\/p>\n These findings add to the growing interest in how accretion disks behave in compact binary systems. When gas is pulled from one star to another, it forms a disk that can heat up, destabilize, and erupt. This may be what triggered the observed flares.<\/p>\n In both detected systems, the flares were likely driven by sudden changes in the disk\u2019s magnetic structure, releasing energy quickly and radiating across several bands. Although each event was brief, it places strong limits on the size and structure of the emitting region. The flares\u2019 durations and intensities suggest a high-energy process unfolding on compact scales.<\/p>\n Galactic Plane Survey Enters A New Phase<\/p>\n The SPT-3G Galactic Plane Survey continues to collect data roughly one month per year, adding to a growing timeline of activity near the galactic center. These millimeter-wave records are now showing that this part of the sky is not as static as once thought.<\/p>\n Led by graduate student Yujie Wan<\/a> of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the team developed specific tools to identify these sudden flares<\/a>, called transient, which appear and fade in a matter of hours or days. As reported by the group, the survey\u2019s growing time-domain data will allow researchers to better understand the fast physics playing out in real time near the center of the Milky Way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two bright, short-lived flares from accreting white dwarfs have been detected near the Milky Way\u2019s core by the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,141,145],"class_list":["post-252027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Two-year-SPT-3G-average-at-150-GHz-in-Galactic-view-1200x841.jpg.webp.webp\")
Two-year SPT-3G average at 150\u202fGHz in Galactic view. Credit: The Astrophysical Journal<\/p>\n