Academics Andre's Research Biocuriosities Books Graduate School History of Science Hot off the Press Igor's Research Interdisciplinarity Molecule of the Month Open Access Philip's Research Philosophy of Science Physics Physicsworld.com
Backreaction Ceclia's Blog at PHD Comics Cocktail Party Physics Cosmic Variance The Daily Transcript Easternblot Everyday Scientist The Evilutionary Biologist Freelancing Science The Futile Cycle Good Math, Bad Math iMechanica in singulo Incoherently Scattered Ponderings Juniorprof Klara Stefflova Life of a Lab Rat The Loom Metadatta Mixed States Morning Coffee Physics Not Even Wrong Notes from the biomass Notional Slurry OpenScience Project Pharyngula PLoS Blog Ponderings of a fool Recombinants The Sandwalk SciAm Observations ScienceBlogs Scientific Clearing House Shtetl-Optimized Three-toed Sloth Uncertain Principles What's New by Bob Park
Via Seed, astronomers have discovered a nebula at the centre of our galaxy that looks like DNA!
The proposed explanation?
The cosmic double helix is probably made up of clouds of ionized dust hovering around a pair of magnetic field lines, Morris [lead author of the paper, subscription required] said, and a wave traveling up the field lines from the center of the galaxy created the twisting double helix shape.
Morris hypothesizes that the wave traveling up the magnetic field lines and creating the double helix nebula is a disk of gas at its base, made to spin by the gravity of the black hole at the center of our galaxy. The double strands of the nebula are created by the dumbbell-like structure of the spinning disk, which concentrates the magnetic field lines in two areas, he said—otherwise, the nebula would be cylindrical.
Biocurious is written by Andre Brown and Philip Johnson, since 2005. Content of the weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
