March 16, 2006

Double helix nebula found at galactic center

Filed under: space - Administrator @ 4:43 am

Astronomers using the infrared Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered an double helix nebula 80 light years in length near the center of the Milky Way galaxy. "We see two intertwining strands wrapped around each other as in a DNA molecule," said Mark Morris, a UCLA physics/astronomy professor and lead author of the article published today in Nature. "Nobody has ever seen anything like that before in the cosmic realm… What we see indicates a high degree of order." The double helix nebula is about 300 light years from the enormous black hole at the center of our galaxy (Earth is c. 25,000 light years from it). "We know the galactic center has a strong magnetic field [1,000 times that in our galactic suburbs] that is highly ordered and that the magnetic field lines are oriented perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy," Morris said. It is interesting how the astronomical macrocosm can mirror the biological microcosm. Seems likely this discovery will be enlisted towards the argument for intelligent design, as well as the fractal/holographic universe.

Astronomers report unprecedented double helix nebula near center of the Milky Way, EurekAlert.org
The Double Helix Nebula: a magnetic torsional wave propagating out of the Galactic centre, Arxiv.org

Comments »

The URI to TrackBack this entry is: http://dreadfuldreams.blogsome.com/2006/03/16/doub/trackback/

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Leave a comment

Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>



Anti-spam measure: please retype the above text into the box provided.

Get free blog up and running in minutes with Blogsome
Theme designed by Alex King