Have astronomers found evidence of a wormhole located right here in our own Solar System?

Well, not exactly, but they have found evidence of an ‘interstellar tunnel’ that travels through our solar system and to other places throughout the Milky Way.

The idea of what is called the Local Hot Bubble was proposed decades ago, but at the time there was little proof that it existed.

According to a new study that has been published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics says that the local hot bubble has been observed and that it connects with another hot bubble that is even bigger.

The data comes largely from information collected by the relatively new eROSITA telescope. This telescope is the first X-ray observatory that exists entirely outside of the Earth’s atmosphere, so it is able to get much more information with far less distortion.

The researchers took the information and created a 3D model of the local hot bubble. This allowed them to confirm various features that had been theorized in the past as well as identify a number of new features that weren’t yet known.

One of the coauthors of the study, Michael Freybergy, an astronomer at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics put out a statement on the study, saying:

“What we didn’t know was the existence of an interstellar tunnel towards Centaurus, which carves a gap in the cooler interstellar medium. This region stands out in stark relief thanks to the much-improved sensitivity of eROSITA and a vastly different surveying strategy compared to ROSAT.”

ROSAT is the predecessor of the eROSITA telescope.

The local hot bubble explains why background X-ray radiation exists in these areas.

The space between stars is known as the interstellar medium, and while it seems largely empty, it actually has quite a bit of gasses and dust. This gas and dust are what make up future stars after they all get drawn together due to gravity.

The presence of the gas and dust in the interstellar medium should have absorbed the low-energy x-ray emissions in the distant past, but they didn’t. The explanation proposed decades ago was this local hot bubble where the gas and dust was not present. It is believed that around fourteen million years ago, supernovas took place that pushed all the interstellar material out of specific areas.

While these types of things likely exist throughout the galaxy and the universe, our local hot bubble seems to be about 1000 light years in diameter.

The study also suggests that our local hot bubble may be a part of a much larger system of hot bubble areas that spread throughout the Milky Way.

It is almost certain that these local hot bubbles won’t be able to be used to transport anything distances throughout the galaxy like the wormholes of science fiction. Even without that possibility, they do help to explain how our solar system, and our galaxy, evolved over time and how its evolution may continue into the future.

Too bad they aren’t actual wormholes.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about a second giant hole has opened up on the sun’s surface. Here’s what it means.