Findings Confirm Theory That Hot Gas Surrounds Milky Way

With the help of a new satellite capable of finding the telltale superheated gas created by stars that exploded long ago, scientists have confirmed a four-decade-old theory that the Milky Way is swathed in a corona of hot gas. The discovery is important because it provides strong evidence that supernovas continuously pump extremely hot gas atoms high into the galactic halo, a nebulous region far above the plane of the galaxy.

It fleshes out astronomers’ ideas of how the material that makes up all the stars in the galaxy is recycled and confirms a hypothesis that the galaxy has a hot corona or halo. The findings were presented Wednesday at an Atlanta meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Further information is available at https://fuse.pha.jhu.edu.