Like Jarmunkand The entire galaxy orbits as it orbits the Earth. A large, high-velocity gas 200,000 light-years away flows around the Milky Way.

We know more or less where it comes from. It is highly associated with large and small Magellanic clouds, dwarf galaxies in orbit, and cannibalism through the Milky Way. It gives the cosmic snake its name – the Magellanic Stream.

However, although the Magellanic stream is chemically compatible with Magellanic clouds, there is one aspect that has astonished astronomers for decades – its mass. There is a billion solar masses of gas in that stream, and the models could not explain why both satellite galaxies lose so much.

“that’s why,” Explained by astronomer Elena de Onjia At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “We came up with a new solution that was great at explaining the mass of the stream.”

According to their new model, the gas does not come from within the magallanic clouds. Rather, it emerges from their galactic haloes – giant clouds of gas and plasma covering most galaxies.

All the sky view of the Magellanic Stream. (D. Nidever et al., NRO / AUI / NSF, a. Mellinger, Leiden-Argentina-Bone Survey, Parks Observatory, Westerborg Observatory, Arecibo Observatory)

The dance of the Magellanic Clouds and the Milky Way is fun, with two satellite galaxies orbiting each other and then orbiting the larger Milky Way together. This complex intervention Warping The three galaxies are thought to be the Milky Way Magellanic clouds intercept.

It was previously thought that the tidal wave from the Milky Way would emit the Magellanic stream as two dwarf galaxies entered the Milky Way’s gravitational field. But this model can only carry 10 percent of the observed mass of the stream.

“This stream is a 50-year-old puzzle,” said Andrew Fox, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute. “We never had a good explanation of where this came from. The really exciting thing is that we’ll pay for an explanation now.”

Recent research suggests that they are Magellanic clouds Their own halos are as big as they are.

The team, led by Scott Luchini, an astronomer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, performed their own simulations of attracting Magellanic clouds into orbit around the Milky Way.

They calculated that it would dramatically change the way a halo magalonic stream of warm gaseous gas formed around the Magellanic clouds, called the Magellanic Corona.

According to their simulations, the formation was a two-step process. The first phase took place long before the Milky Way captured the Magellanic clouds, but only when they orbited each other. The large Magellanic cloud stole a bunch of materials from the small Magellanic cloud and lost a small amount of gas.

The process took about 5.7 billion years, orbiting the Milky Way as two galaxies formed as a result of the precious gas of about 3 billion solar masses. At this point, the gravitational forces planted the seeds for the Magellanic spring, giving the halo 10 to 20 percent of its final mass.

Animation of the simulation. (Elena de Onjia and Scott Lucini / University of Wisconsin-Madison)

In the second stage, after capturing two galaxies in the Milky Way’s orbit, the gravity of our galaxy and its interactions with its own galaxy, the halo, pulls out one-fifth of the mass of the Magellanic corona and creates the remaining stream.

According to the team’s simulations, these two-phase events recreate the structure and mass of the Magellanic stream, including a branch of a stream called the Leading Arm, which orbits two dwarf galaxies.

We have not yet found the Magellanic Corona directly, but the team model provides the toolkit for it.

The gas cloud must contain the ionized states of carbon and silicon. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, we can look into distant quasars through the Magellanic Corona and analyze their light to see if these objects have traveled through significant clouds during their journey to the Solar System.

“Background-quasar views give the opportunity to clearly detect the Magellanic corona because they are not polluted by the interstellar materials of the larger Magellanic cloud.” The researchers wrote in their paper.

The research was published Nature.