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amateur scientists discover galactic

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bubbles

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presented by science at nasa

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our galaxy gets its name from a luminous

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band stretching across the sky on warm

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summer nights innumerable stars and

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spiral arms blend together to form a

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milky river of light that literally cuts

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the heavens in two

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ancient greeks called it the milky

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circle or in classical latin via lactea

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the milky way modern sky watchers might

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have found a better name though

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dom perignon

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a team of more than 35 000 amateur

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scientists have been looking through

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images taken by nasa's spitzer space

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telescope

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and they have discovered more than 5 000

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bubbles in the disk of our galaxy

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the milky way's disk is like champagne

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with bubbles all over the place says eli

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bressert an astrophysics doctoral

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student at the european southern

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observatory

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bressert is a professional astronomer

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who has been analyzing data from the

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milky way project which harnesses the

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power of citizen scientists to explore

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space

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computers can find these kinds of

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structures but none can yet match the

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power of the human eye notes robert

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simpson of oxford university principal

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investigator of the milky way project

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humans are particularly good at noticing

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the wispy arcs

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partially broken rings

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and circles within circles of

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overlapping bubbles in the crowded

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galaxy

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the milky way project taps into the

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wisdom of crowds by requiring that at

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least five people flag a potential

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bubble before adding it to the catalog

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we have plans to try and use data from

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the milky way project to help train

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computers to perform this task better at

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simpson

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interstellar bubbles are a sign of star

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formation fast moving winds from young

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hot stars blow bubbles into the

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surrounding gas and dust from which they

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are formed

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because stars are born in groups the

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bubbles tend to crowd together

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overlapping in ways that can trick

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computers

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people on the other hand are finding

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more bubbles than researchers thought

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possible

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these findings make us suspect that the

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milky way is a much more active

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star-forming galaxy than previously

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thought says bressert

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spitzer is an infrared telescope that

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can see long distances through the dusty

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plane of the milky way

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infrared vision is key to the bubble

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hunt

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star-forming regions are deeply embedded

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within dust in the galaxy explained

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simpson ordinary visible light has

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trouble penetrating these areas

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you need infrared or radio wavelengths

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to detect them

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bubbles are so numerous researchers

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suspect they must play an important role

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in the evolution of the galaxy

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for instance rapidly expanding bubbles

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can run into interstellar clouds of gas

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triggering bursts of star formations as

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the clouds collapse

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new stars in turn blow more bubbles

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it's a cyclical process that could keep

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the milky way fizzing like a gas of the

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bubbly

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curiously the center of the milky way

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seems to be fizzing less than it should

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the number of bubbles counted by

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volunteers drops off around the galactic

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center we would expect star formation to

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be peaking in the galactic center

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because that's where most of the dense

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gas is says bressert

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this project is bringing us lots of

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questions

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anyone who would like to help find the

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answers can join the milky way project

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at milkywayproject.org