Their conclusion also kills off the attempt to blame the bubble on the Milky Way’s central black hole. Of course, pulsars are actually yet another theoretical object so I’m not quite convinced by their explanation. They state, regarding the gamma rays:A glowing blob known as “the cocoon”, which appears to be inside one of the enormous gamma-ray emanations from the centre of our galaxy dubbed the “Fermi bubbles”, has puzzled astronomers since it was discovered in 2012.
In new research published in Nature Astronomy, we show the cocoon is caused by gamma rays emitted by fast-spinning extreme stars called “millisecond pulsars” located in the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, which orbits the Milky Way. While our results clear up the mystery of the cocoon, they also cast a pall over attempts to search for dark matter in any gamma-ray glow it may emit.
Don’t you just love how excited they get at the mere “prospect” of dark matter (tingles up the leg I imagine) and how it’s “unfortunate” that’s their results don't support that prospect. But I have to ask, why is it unfortunate? The data is what the data is … scientists should be not so invested in dark matter. They should be invested in the truth, where it may take them.We considered several possibilities, including the exciting prospect they are a signature of dark matter, the invisible substance known only by its gravitational effects which astronomers believe makes up much of the universe. Unfortunately, the shape of the cocoon closely matches the distribution of visible stars, which rules out dark matter as the origin. One way or another, the stars were responsible for the gamma rays.
Here’s what they say next:
Found? For certain?We are satisfied there is only one possibility: rapidly spinning objects called “millisecond pulsars”. These are the remnants of particular stars, significantly more massive than the Sun, that are also closely orbiting another star.
Under just the right circumstances, such binary systems produce a neutron star – an object about as heavy as the Sun but only about 20km across – that rotates hundreds of times per second.
Because of their rapid rotation and strong magnetic field, these neutron stars act as natural particle accelerators: they launch particles at extremely high energy into space.
These particles then emit gamma rays. Millisecond pulsars in the Sagittarius dwarf were the ultimate source of the mysterious cocoon, we found.
Here’s their paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2204.12054.pdf . The abstract says “Sgr dSph has no on-going star formation, but we demonstrate that its γ-ray signal is naturally explained by inverse Compton scattering of cosmic microwave background photons by high-energy electron-positron pairs injected by the dwarf’s millisecond pulsar (MSP) population, combined with these objects’ magnetospheric emission. This finding suggests that MSPs likely produce significant γ-ray emission amongst old stellar populations.”
So not actually found. Merely interpreted from what they presuppose. I find no mention in a search of the literature on the web of Sgr dSph having pulsars. And, like mainstream astrophysicists have done in their black hole image analyses, they assumed a alternative “template” that included only known point sources of x-ray emission … perhaps predisposing their model to pick, if not the blackhole explanation (which they compared it to), their Sgr dSph explanation. It doesn't seem they considered the possibility that some "natural" plasma/electrical process in the jets themselves might be responsible.
Also, there is the issue of whether pulsars are what they think they are. Neutron stars. I don’t believe either EU or the PU (plasma cosmology) believe in them. For example: https://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004 ... pulsar.htm .
But in any event, having apparently quashed the dark matter explanation, they have to do the expected and end their article with this hopeful verbiage: “The hunt for dark matter signals goes on.” Dark matter, after all, is their community's primary bread and butter. Just saying ...
