Astronomers discover enormous 'barrier' separating the center of the Milky Way from the cosmic ray s
By Brandon Specktor about 24 hours ago
Something is keeping the universe's fastest-moving particles from entering the center of our galaxy.
An artist's impression of the Milky Way's center, using data from the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope. (Image credit: NASA Goddard)
The center of the Milky Way may be even more bizarre than astronomers thought, according to a new study.
For the study, a team of researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Nanjing investigated a map of radioactive gamma-rays — the highest-energy form of light in the universe, which can arise when extremely high-speed particles called cosmic rays crash into ordinary matter — blasting in and around the center of our galaxy.
The map revealed that something near the center of the galaxy appears to be accelerating particles to mind-blowing speeds — very near the speed of light — and creating an abundance of cosmic rays and gamma-rays just outside the galactic center. However, even as the galactic center blows a constant storm of high-energy radiation into space, something near the Milky Way's core prevents a large portion of cosmic rays from other parts of the universe from entering, the team reported Nov. 9 in the journal Nature Communications.
The researchers described the effect as an invisible "barrier" that is wrapped around the galactic center and is keeping the density of cosmic rays there significantly lower than the baseline level seen throughout the rest of our galaxy. In other words: Cosmic rays can get out of the galactic center, but have a hard time getting in.
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Very kind of you! 
