Whoa, astronomers stumbled upon a totally unexpected discovery! They were looking through 13 years of data from a NASA space telescope when they spotted a mysterious gamma-ray signal way outside our galaxy. Wild thing is, it’s weirdly similar to another unexplained cosmic ray pattern. Talk about a lucky break!
The researchers were originally checking for a gamma-ray version of the cosmic microwave background’s “dipole” pattern. That ancient light has a hotter and colder side based on how our solar system moves compared to the background. Finding the same deal with gamma rays could be a huge clue about where that dipole comes from.
But instead, they found a crazy strong gamma dipole pointing to a completely different part of the sky, nowhere near the cosmic microwave background’s. It’s got like ten times more gamma rays coming from one direction than they expected. Not at all what they were looking for, but it rings a bell – reminds them of a similar wiggy cosmic ray dipole detected recently.
These ultra-high energy cosmic rays get bent different ways by our galaxy’s magnetic field. But somehow, this gamma dipole is matched up with the cosmic ray one, with the same 7% difference between directions. Wild! It means there could be some intense unknown sources spewing out both kinds of particles out there.
Finding those mysterious cosmic accelerators could seriously help figure out how particles get whipped up to those insane energies. For now though, it’s just a surprising puzzle, a crazy gamma signal that came out of nowhere. You never know what you’ll stumble over if you keep searching the skies across all kinds of light. These scientists just got super lucky and found a new cosmic mystery to uncover!
