You are inside a huge hot bubble. Actually, Earth is.
What happens is that the sun is in a really hot, low-density area in the Milky Way, which is surrounded by a shell of cold, neutral gas and dust.
This spot is called the local bubble. You know, that's not something new to us.
This idea was first proposed about 50 years ago and the first 3D map of this zone was created in 2019.
But probably since then, astronomers have gotten more and more curious about this phenomenon. After all, why does this region even exist?
Thankfully, things got a lot more interesting recently when scientists decided to map the bubble again.
They not only uncovered some curious details about its shape and temperature, But they also discovered the presence of a mysterious interstellar tunnel passing through it pointing towards the Centaurus constellation.
And this space tunnel could potentially link us to other worlds. Before we dive deeper into that, let's ask a really interesting question.
Have we always been inside this hot, strange space bubble? Well, the answer is no.
When our local bubble was created, the Sun was way farther from the action. It's important to understand that nothing in the universe stands still.
