'Second Milky Way' discovered at the edge of the solar system

The discovery was based on research by a team of scientists from multiple institutions in the US, using NASA's Pleiades supercomputer.

Scientists used NASA's Pleiades supercomputer to analyze the rare data humanity has about the mysterious structure called the "Oort Cloud" in the mysterious region of space that NASA's Voyager spacecraft is heading towards and discovered surprising information.

Accordingly, the Oort cloud lurks at the edge of our solar system and is about 99,000 times wider than the distance between Earth and the Sun.

Scientists still have no idea what its true shape is. They only cautiously speculate that it is a spherical shell surrounding the entire star system, possibly consisting of two layers. However, the detailed structure and distribution of icy objects within the Oort Cloud remain a mystery.

Simulation of the Oort cloud, a two-layer spherical structure surrounding the Solar System (Photo: NASA)

Now, contrary to all imagination, NASA's Pleiades supercomputer shows the presence of a spiral structure that resembles a copy of the spiral "arms" that the galaxy containing the Earth, the Milky Way... possesses.

Although it is called the "Milky Way," the Milky Way is actually a spiral galaxy with four giant "arms" that form a bright disk of light. The "Milky Way" that snakes across the sky is actually part of that disk of light.

"We found that some comets in the inner Oort Cloud, located between 1,000 and 10,000 AU (AU is an astronomical unit, 1 AU is the distance from Earth to the Sun) form a long-lived spiral structure," Southwest Research Institute Science Director Luke Dones, a member of the research team, told Space.com.

“We were quite surprised. People see spirals in Saturn's rings, disks around young stars and galaxies. The universe seems to like spirals!” - Dr. Dones continued.

Although tiny compared to the spirals that make up the Milky Way's structure, the Oort Cloud's icy spirals are up to 15,000 AU long, running perpendicular to the galactic plane.

There are billions of comets that make up this strange spiral. And that's just a fraction of the comets in the Oort Cloud.

To come to this conclusion, the researchers had to compile a huge dataset of objects from the Oort Cloud and other relevant details collected by spacecraft and observatories.

Our Earth is located in the solar system of a galaxy called the Milky Way. (Photo: Wiki)

The team is also looking for solutions to be able to observe and image the spiral structure mentioned above.

The most feasible option is to use the Space-Time Legacy Survey (LSST), a 10-year program planned for the Vera Rubin Observatory (located in Chile), scheduled to start in late 2025.

New discoveries about the vastness of the universe continue to intrigue humanity. Earlier this year, astronomers discovered a supermassive black hole firing a huge beam of energy directly at Earth. This giant “cosmic machine,” with a mass equivalent to 700 million times that of the Sun, is aimed at our planet from a galaxy in the early universe that is 800 million years old after the Big Bang, making it the most distant black hole ever discovered.

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