{"id":150054,"date":"2022-11-13T15:22:21","date_gmt":"2022-11-13T21:22:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/scientists-discover-massive-extragalactic-structure-behind-the-milky-way"},"modified":"2022-11-13T15:22:21","modified_gmt":"2022-11-13T21:22:21","slug":"scientists-discover-massive-extragalactic-structure-behind-the-milky-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/scientists-discover-massive-extragalactic-structure-behind-the-milky-way","title":{"rendered":"Scientists discover massive \u2018extragalactic structure\u2019 behind the Milky Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Astronomers have detected an enormous extragalactic structure hiding in an uncharted region of space far beyond the Milky Way<\/a> \u2018s center.<\/p>\n

This phantom region, known as the zone of avoidance, is a blank spot on our map of the universe<\/a>, comprising somewhere between 10% and 20% of the night sky<\/a>. The reason we can\u2019t see it \u2014 at least with standard visible light telescopes \u2014 is because the Milky Way\u2019s bulging center blocks our view of it; the center of our galaxy is so dense with stars, dust and other matter<\/a> that light from the zone of avoidance gets scattered or absorbed before reaching Earth\u2019s telescopes.<\/p>\n

However, researchers have had better luck uncovering the zone\u2019s secrets with telescopes that can detect infrared radiation<\/a> \u2014 a type of energy that\u2019s invisible to human eyes, but powerful enough to shine through dense clouds of gas and dust. Infrared surveys of the zone of avoidance have found evidence of thousands of individual galaxies shining through the cosmic fog, though little is known about the large-scale structures that lurk there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Astronomers have detected an enormous extragalactic structure hiding in an uncharted region of space far beyond the Milky Way \u2018s center. This phantom region, known as the zone of avoidance, is a blank spot on our map of the universe, comprising somewhere between 10% and 20% of the night sky. The reason we can\u2019t see [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":511,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/511"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}