- A Bubbly Origin for Stars around the Sun (youtube.com)
This video describes new research linking an interstellar void known as the Local Bubble to nearby star-forming regions. It begins by zooming into an artist’s rendering of the Milky Way to our own galactic neighborhood. Next, an animation beginning 14 million years ago steps through time to show how a series of supernovas created the Local Bubble. As the bubble expands, it sweeps up gas and dust that condense to form star clusters. The video then resets to 14 million years ago and steps forward again to show how the Sun’s path through the Milky Way galaxy brought it into the Local Bubble about 5 million years ago. Today, we’re coincidentally close to the middle of the bubble. Finally, the video pans around a 3D model of the Local Bubble and associated star-forming regions as they exist today. Video Credit: STScI
- Local Bubble (Wikipedia)
The Local Bubble, or Local Cavity, is a relative cavity in the interstellar medium (ISM) of the Orion Arm in the Milky Way. It contains the closest of celestial neighbours and among others, the Local Interstellar Cloud (which contains the Solar System), the neighbouring G-Cloud, the Ursa Major moving group (the closest stellar moving group) and the Hyades (the nearest open cluster).
- The exceptionally sparse gas of the Local Bubble is the result of supernovae that exploded within the past ten to twenty million years.
- The Local Bubble (sites.google.com)
The discovery that the 1000-light-year-wide “Local Bubble” surrounding the Sun and Earth is responsible for the formation of all nearby, young stars was first presented in a paper published in Nature on January 12, 2022. Please use this page to find news, publications and talks, visuals (images, interactives, and videos), team info, and data. And, if we forgot something, just let us know—and we’ll try to include it in future updates!
- The Solar System has been traveling through the region currently occupied by the Local Bubble for the last five to ten million years.
- The Solar System is close to its inner rim, about halfway along the arm’s length, in a relative cavity in the arm’s interstellar medium, known as the Local Bubble.
- The Solar System is located within a structure called the Local Bubble, a low-density region of the galactic interstellar medium. Within this region is the Local Interstellar Cloud (LIC), an area of slightly higher hydrogen density.