The image of the bright center of the Milky Way, where the birth of stars and intense activity are shrouded in a cloud of dust. New research shows that a mysterious signal from some dusty regions of our galaxy can come from rotating microscopic dust grains.
Scientists have recorded a mysterious signal over the North Pole of the Earth. While researchers do not have accurate information about the nature of the phenomenon, but the analysis confirms the idea that the signal is able to come from tiny, extremely rapidly rotating grains of cosmic dust.
Unusual Signal
In the late 1990s. astronomers looking at relic radiation in the Milky Way noticed a strange signal. A weak signal was recognized between typical radiation of charged particles (free emission) and spiral helicoidal cosmic rays (synchrotron radiation), the nature of which could not be explained. Is this an unaccounted part of emissions or something completely new? At one time, the find was called anomalous microwave radiation.
Today, scientists still haven't figured out the nature of signals, but new analysis provides the key to understanding. The new review from C-BASS (All Sky Survey) focused on the display of the entire sky at a frequency of 5 gigahertz using two telescopes (California and South Africa). The researchers focused on studying the sky above the North Pole of the Earth. Thus it was possible to eliminate the two most common sources of emissions, looking at lower frequencies. The leading theory, confirmed by new research, says that the mysterious signal is created by tiny dust particles (several hundred atoms). These nanoparticles rotate at an incredible speed due to contact, such as collisions with other particles in the interstellar medium.
However, this assumption still does not give an idea of what the nanoparticles are made of. Polyaromatic hydrocarbons are organic compounds represented by carbon and hydrogen rings. They seem to be an excellent candidate, but so far there is no convincing evidence in their favor. Some believe that a single source of abnormal microwave radiation can be caused by silicate or carbon dust.
Understanding the nature of anomalous microwave radiation will help answer larger questions. One of the most important ways of understanding the early Universe is considered to be the background radiation - the light from the Big Bang. Anomalous microwave radiation can contaminate accurate measurements of the CMB radiation. Moreover, the new data will help to better understand the interstellar dust in its own galaxy, the Milky Way. The question is being studied from scratch, so you have to wait for the detection of a unique signal or go to collect cosmic dust.
