Earth Is Trapped Inside a Giant Space Bubble, Scientists Say

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Scientists just found something wild — a kind of cosmic tunnel leading out of our Solar System. It’s not a spaceship tunnel, but a real gap in hot plasma that surrounds us like a bubble. This “channel” might explain how cosmic rays and energy slip in and out of our neighborhood. The crazy part? It points straight into the galaxy, like a hidden exit. Sounds like sci-fi… but the data says it’s real.  Credit: Interstellar Mapping: by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14895/ eROSITA: by DLR - German Aerospace Center CC BY 3.0 DE https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/de/deed.en https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:R%C3%B6ntgenteleskop_eROSITA.webm Heliosphere: by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20406/#media_group_378704 Gamma-Ray Burst: by NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio - KBR Wyle Services, LLC/Scott Wiessinger, University of Maryland College Park/Francis Reddy, NASA/GSFC/Elizabeth Hays, KBR Wyle Services, LLC/Adriana Manrique Gutierrez https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fermi_Finds_Novel_Feature_in_BOAT_Gamma-Ray_Burst_(SVS14634).webm  SRG-eROSITA: by JohannesBuchner CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SRG-eROSITA_all-sky_image.jpg XRISM: by NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio - Advocates in Manpower Management, Inc./Sophia Roberts, Advocates in Manpower Management, Inc./Rob Andreoli, Intern/Harrison Bach, Advocates in Manpower Management, Inc./John D. Philyaw, KBR Wyle Services, LLC/Adriana Manrique Gutierrez, KBR Wyle Services, LLC/Scott Wiessinger, University of Maryland College Park/Jeanette Kazmierczak, ADNET Systems, Inc./Aaron E. Lepsch https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:XRISM-_Exploring_the_Hidden_X-ray_Cosmos_(SVS14405).webm Space X-rays: by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center https://www.nasa.gov/missions/sounding-rockets/nasa-january-launch-studying-sources-of-space-x-rays/ Sounding Rocket: by NASA Goddard https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sounding_Rocket_Solves_One_Cosmic_Mystery,_Reveals_Another_alzgtd2PbcI.webm Animation is created by Bright Side. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/   Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV  Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Our Social Media:  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightplanet/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en   Stock materials (photos, footages and other):  https://www.depositphotos.com  https://www.shutterstock.com  https://www.eastnews.ru  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.

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00:00So get this, Earth might be actually located near space highways that could connect us to other worlds.

00:07That's because our Sun sits right in the center of a giant bubble filled with hot gas, carved out by ancient supernovae.

00:15And this bubble likely has tunnels linking us to distant galaxies.

00:20So does it mean it's time to develop space tourism?

00:24Well, let's figure it out.

00:26Most of us think space is just planets floating around in eternal darkness.

00:31But new research hints at the possibility that it might not be really true.

00:37It turns out our whole solar system is actually sitting inside a giant bubble of hot, thin gas.

00:44And it gets even better.

00:46Scientists now think there might even be a weird cosmic tunnel or channel made of this stuff.

00:52It supposedly stretches out toward faraway stars.

00:56Astronomers spent years mapping the sky.

00:59And after they put all the data together, they found something that looks like a long pathway of hot, low-density plasma,

01:07which is basically that very thin, super-hot gas.

01:11And this so-called channel reaches out from around us to distant constellations.

01:16Researchers from Germany confirmed this discovery using data from a space telescope called E-Rosita.

01:24We'll talk about it a tiny bit later.

01:26Now, interestingly, scientists discovered that our solar system sits inside something called the local hot bubble a long time ago.

01:35This bubble is actually a huge area, about 1,000 light-years wide.

01:41It was created when several stars exploded in giant supernovas millions of years ago.

01:47Those explosions heated up the gas around them and basically carved out this bubble of hot, low-density space.

01:55And their shockwaves created weak points in the bubble around us, eventually forming interstellar tunnels.

02:02That cosmic event was so huge that the leftover hot plasma is still floating around us today.

02:09Now, to understand this bubble better, scientists used E-Rosita, which is an X-ray telescope.

02:17It scans the sky looking for soft X-ray light.

02:20That's a kind of light we can't see with our eyes.

02:23It comes from hot gas, old supernova leftovers, and other structures in space.

02:29They also compared E-Rosita's new information with older data from another X-ray telescope called ROSAT.

02:36And finally, putting all this information together, they were able to make a much clearer map of what's around our solar system.

02:45Mind you, this wasn't easy.

02:47They had to divide the sky into thousands of tiny pieces and carefully measure faint signals coming from warm gas,

02:55empty pockets of dust, and other stuff floating in space.

02:59But their effort paid off.

03:00After sorting through everything, they managed to figure out the faint glow of hot plasma around us.

03:07It proved we were not just drifting through empty space.

03:11We're inside a giant burned-out bubble created by extinguished stars.

03:16But what really surprised scientists was the discovery of some kind of channel.

03:22It looked like a long tunnel in space, cutting through the hot gas around us and connecting our part of the galaxy to star systems far away.

03:32They also found signs of another channel pointing toward the Canis Major constellation.

03:38And those might not be the only ones.

03:41The data suggests there could be a whole network of such paths, branching out through space.

03:47Each one works like a hidden back row.

03:49Scientists used to guess that the space around our solar system might have little pockets or rooms carved out by old exploding stars.

03:59We could probably imagine them like paves inside outer space.

04:03But no one had the necessary tools to actually prove it.

04:07But now, thanks to that new data from the Erosita telescope, they finally have a clear picture.

04:13The telescope showed that the space around us wasn't just empty.

04:18It's full of hot, thin gas and strange shapes, including tunnels and bubbles.

04:24This proves at least part of what older scientists predicted.

04:28We're living inside a giant bubble of hot gas, and that bubble connects to other bubbles through long, low-density channels.

04:36The new study also shows that the pressure inside our bubble is lower than scientists expected.

04:43This might mean the bubble isn't closed.

04:46It could be open in some directions, letting that hot gas flow out into other parts of space.

04:53In short, this hot bubble isn't simple at all.

04:57Parts of it might be open pathways, and other parts look blocked off.

05:01Being inside, it is kind of like trying to walk through a forest.

05:06Some areas have clear trails, and others are packed with trees.

05:10And even though astronomers have mapped big chunks of the bubble and found these strange channels,

05:16there's still a lot they don't fully get.

05:18Some paths look like they're made of a bunch of connected empty pockets, and others look totally closed.

05:25To understand the whole picture, we'll need better tools and more data.

05:29Hopefully, with stronger X-ray telescopes, deeper sky scans, and better computer models,

05:36we'll finally understand the nature and structure of the bubble we're living in.

05:41We might be able to make a kind of map of those hidden channels,

05:45and learn how they affect things like cosmic rays, dust, and the solar wind around us.

05:51Now, speaking of telescopes, we can't help but mention the one that helped us figure out the very existence of the bubble around us.

05:58The thing is, scientists have been trying to understand a faint glow of low-energy X-rays that seemed to cover the whole sky.

06:06For many years, they weren't sure where this glow was coming from.

06:11And then, the NASA-supported DXL mission finally helped to solve the mystery.

06:17Researchers used old but reliable detectors that first flew on a rocket in the 1970s.

06:23With these instruments, they confirmed that most of this X-ray glow came from a huge area of extremely hot gas around us.

06:32It was named the local hot bubble.

06:35Back in the 1990s, another X-ray mission called ROSAT made pretty good maps of the sky.

06:41And it found something surprising.

06:44Comets gave off soft X-rays, too.

06:47Later, scientists realized this happened when the solar wind, fast particles from the Sun, collided with neutral atoms.

06:55This process, called charge exchange, can happen almost anywhere in space.

07:01Because of this, some scientists started to doubt whether the local hot bubble was really the main source of the X-ray glow.

07:08So, to test this, DXL launched on December 12, 2012, from New Mexico.

07:14The rocket flew high above Earth's atmosphere for about five minutes, giving the instruments a clear view of space.

07:22The goal was to look at a worst-case situation where lots of charge exchange might occur.

07:28Right now, our solar system is moving through a cloud of cold gas in space, known as the local interstellar cloud.

07:36That's also nicknamed the local fluff.

07:39Cute, right?

07:39Neutral hydrogen and helium atoms from this cloud move through our solar system at very high speeds.

07:47Hydrogen gets affected easily by different forces, but helium mostly follows the pull of the Sun's gravity.

07:54Because of this, the helium forms a focusing cone, a region with extra helium that Earth passes through every December.

08:02However, this cone is the perfect place to look for charge exchange, since it holds more neutral atoms than usual.

08:09But what happens during charge exchange?

08:12The solar wind comes from the Sun's corona, the star's super-hot outer layer.

08:17The particles in the solar wind have lost many of their electrons.

08:21When one of these particles hits a neutral atom, it can steal one of the atom's electrons.

08:27The stolen electron briefly gives off a soft X-ray.

08:31This is how the glow is created.

08:34Now, to compare things, the researchers also looked at old ROSAT data from 1990,

08:40taken in a direction away from the helium cone, where charge exchange should be weak.

08:45By putting everything together, the scientists found that only about 40% of the soft X-rays come from inside our solar system.

08:53The rest, the majority, comes from the local hot bubble.

08:58This means the huge cloud of hot gas around us really is the main source of the X-ray glow.

09:05But let's get back to the discovery of the space intergalactic tunnel.

09:10It's a valuable lesson for us that space might look calm and empty when we look up, but that's not true.

09:17Space around us actually contains dust, plasma, radiation, magnetic fields, and mysterious tunnels.

09:26All of these things mix and swirl together, making space much more complicated than a simple vacuum.

09:33That's it for today!

09:34So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.

09:39Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side!

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