"Benford-LifeAtGalactic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Benford Gregory)

intricate filaments shine by energetic (in fact, relativistic) electrons,
radiating in strong magnetic fields, which are aligned along the filaments.

There was nothing remotely like them in astronomy. What process could make long,
slightly curved paths, a light year wide?

I undertook the challenge, with some hesitation. The object was bizarre, which
meant some new ideas were needed. I was aided by later discoveries in 1985,
which spotted separate filaments within a few hundred light years of the core,
single threads shining brightly. Above the Arch, some Japanese astronomers found
what looks like a weak, fat jet.

How to explain thin filaments which glow by electron luminosity, a hundred times
longer than they were wide? I thought of neon lights, which are glow discharges
sustained by electric currents in slender tubes. What could contain the hot gas,
or electrons? The magnetic fields, which mid-1980s measurements found to be at
least a hundred times stronger than typical in the rest of the galaxy.

Astronomers began thinking of conceptual models for the phenomenon, mostly using
magnetic loops which had been somehow expelled from the galactic center, and
were striking distant gas clouds. These I didn't much believe; the Arch was too
orderly. Others thought maybe the filaments were cosmic strings -immense
fractures in space-time, made in the early universe -- lit up by their passage
through the galactic inner regions. This model was disproved quickly, because
strings should move at very nearly the speed of light; the Arch didn't.

By the time I got through with my calculations, building a mathematical model, I
had decided that the entire network of Arch and threads might be a huge circuit.
It had to be powered by some battery, and while most people thought the galactic
center was the logical site, I kept noticing that it was hundreds of light years
away. Instead, I studied the giant molecular clouds which were moving counter to
the general galactic rotation. These were quite odd, dark and carrying millions
of stellar masses of dust and gas in clumps light years wide.

I found that if they were even slightly ionized -- and how could they not be,
with so much ultraviolet glare from nearby blue stars? -- these clouds would
generate electric fields as they crossed the strong magnetic fields. The edges
of these clouds could then act as batteries, applying voltages which accelerated
electrons, sending them shooting along the magnetic field lines, lighting up the
magnetic structures that already existed.

Since these discharges occurred because of momentary passage of clouds, they
were essentially like weather -- changeable. Perhaps we could see some bright
filaments weaken, others flare? I calculated the times required, and found that
the best we could expect was a change within a decade or so, or longer.

Since these were circuits, they reminded me of lightning. Clouds on Earth
discharge to ground along slightly ionized trails in the air. The stroke time is
about a second, just a bit shorter than the time the lightning takes to begin
snaking about itself, like a garden hose -- or the twisting snapping sparks from