{"id":422062,"date":"2026-05-02T16:36:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T16:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/422062\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T16:36:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T16:36:18","slug":"scientists-found-structures-in-space-that-are-light-years-in-length","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/422062\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Found Structures In Space That Are Light-Years In Length"},"content":{"rendered":"

It turns out those stretched-out hyperspace lines from Star Wars are real. Sort of. In 2023<\/a>, a team of astrophysicists discovered a bunch of one-dimensional filaments, 5-10 light-years long, chilling in the middle of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Years later, they\u2019re still investigating, and the mystery is only growing.<\/p>\n

While the long white lines that appear when Han Solo<\/a> throws the hyperspace lever on the Falcon are actually stars, these new filaments are thought to be some kind of outflow from Sagittarius A, a supermassive black hole that lies at the center of the Milky Way. Essentially, the filaments are exceptionally long strings of electrons interacting with a magnetic field. These new filaments run horizontally and appear on only one side of Sag A, leading scientists to believe they formed from the black hole millions of years ago.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

Image by Farhad Yusef-Zadeh<\/p>\n

That\u2019s right; these one-dimensional space strings aren\u2019t exactly new. Even if we set aside their age, the existence of gigantic one-dimensional filaments in the Milky Way was discovered back in the early \u201980s by astrophysicist Farhad Yusef-Zadeh. The filaments Yusef-Zadeh discovered, however, were huge vertical monoliths measuring up to 150 light-years high. It\u2019s the horizontal orientation of the new filaments that makes them so interesting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m used to them being vertical,\u201d Yusef-Zadeh confessed in the new paper released by Northwestern University. \u201cI never considered there might be others along the plane.\u201d Yusef-Zadeh went on to explain that studying the Milky Way\u2019s filaments could help scientists learn more about the way Sag A spins and its orientation relative to the rest of the Milky Way.<\/p>\n

The old vertical filaments first discovered hanging around the Milky Way in 1984 run perpendicular to the galactic plane. The new horizontal filaments, however, are parallel to the plane and point radially toward the black hole at the center of our galaxy. Another difference between the two types of filaments is how they behave.<\/p>\n

\"hyperspace\"<\/p>\n

hyperspace<\/p>\n

The up-and-down lines are magnetic and relativistic, while the left-and-right lines appear to emit thermal radiation. The Milky Way\u2019s vertical filaments contain particles moving at close to the speed of light; the horizontal ones accelerate thermal material in a molecular cloud. Comparing the two is like the celestial equivalent of comparing apples to oranges.<\/p>\n

Yusef-Zadeh credits enhanced radio<\/a> astronomy technology, specifically the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory\u2019s MeerKAT telescope. The scientist used a specialized technique to remove the background from MeerKAT images while also smoothing out noise to isolate the filaments from the surrounding environment. Yusef-Zadeh called the new MeerKAT images a \u201cgame changer.\u201d<\/p>\n

As scientists well know, every new discovery brings with it a million new questions, and these horizontal filaments are no exception. Yusef Zadeh is hard at work unraveling all of the new Milky Way mysteries that come with the new filaments. \u201cOur work is never complete.\u201d confessed Yusef-Zadeh. The astrophysicist went on to stress the importance of always making \u201cnew observations,\u201d constantly challenging existing ideas, and refining analysis.<\/p>\n

These filaments are just one more clue that points toward the center of the Milky Way and the black hole that sits there as the key to understanding our whole galaxy better. Sag A is a swirling black mass of curiosities like these horizontal filaments, waiting for scientists to discover them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It turns out those stretched-out hyperspace lines from Star Wars are real. Sort of. In 2023, a team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,141,145],"class_list":["post-422062","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\/422062","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=422062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}