A supernova is the most likely cause of a 500-light-wear wide hole that split an ancient molecular cloud in two.
Scientists have discovered a gigantic hole blown out of the Milky Way, and believe a powerful supernova 10 million years ago might be to blame. The gap or « cavity » as astronomers are describing it, was described this week in a paper published this week in The Astrophysical Journal Letters as a spherical void cut out of the Perseus and Taurus molecular clouds and spans nearly 500 light-years across. « We have two theories—either one supernova went off at the core of this bubble and pushed gas outward forming what we now call the ‘Perseus-Taurus Supershell,' » said lead author Shmuel Bialy, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Theory and Computation at Harvard’s Center for Astrophysics (CfA), « or a series of supernovae occurring over millions of years created it over time. » « Hundreds of stars are forming or exist already at the surface of this giant bubble, » Bialy added. Incredibly, what we’ve long thought of as two independent structures – the Perseus and the Taurus molecular clouds, located in the region of the sky marked by the constellations Perseus and Taurus – might actually have been one and the same as recently as 10 million years ago, but was literally torn in two by the cosmic blast.
