The Mystery of the Cosmic Radio Globs
In 2019, rather out of the blue, a group of Australian astronomers found some strange rings in the night sky. Found by radio telescope, these spooky, ethereal whorls looked slightly like the thick plasma Ghostbusters shoot from their proton blasters to capture ghosts, or the undulating globs in a huge lava light. And they were huge: numerous countless light-years throughout-- quickly overshadowing the size of our own galaxy-- and countless light-years away.
The astronomers were at a loss to describe them.The rings differed from any others observed in images produced by radio telescopes, like the swirling husks of matter and fumes shed by passing away stars, or the frisbees of gas that can surround recently formed stars, referred to as protoplanetary disks. Previous research stud...