We have in today's science news quite an interesting article, one entitled "Mysteriously Perfect Sphere Spotted in Space by Astronomers." We read, "In data collected by a powerful radio telescope, astronomers have found what appears to be a perfectly spherical bubble." The term "bubble" (suggesting something small) is inappropriate to describe what was found. The translucent orb found in space is trillions of times larger than the sun, and has a diameter of at least 11 light-years. A light-year is the distance that light travels in a year.
The article is based on a preprint that gives us an image of the mysterious translucent sphere, which scientists have named Teleios. The image is below:
Teleios, from the scientific paper here The article immediately tries to suggest that scientists understand how this super-gigantic translucent sphere appeared. But the article misspeaks, because there is currently no credible explanation for this object. The article incorrectly states, "We know more or less what it is – it's the ball of expanding material ejected by an exploding star, a supernova remnant – but how it came to be is more of a puzzle." No, scientists do not know how this Teleios object originated, and do not know that it is a supernova remnant.
A supernova remnant is an expanding shell of gas that results from the explosion of a star much bigger than the sun. The expanding shell of gas that comes from a supernova is often called a planetary nebula, which is an example of a poorly chosen phrase used by astronomers. So-called planetary nebulas are not planets and do not come from planets.
Astronomers have photographed very many planetary nebulas, very many supernova remnants. Such things typically have an irregular shape, not a perfectly circular shape. An example is the Crab Nebula shown below:
Credit:
NASA, ESA, J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State University)
Using the link
here, you can see photos of many supernova remnants (so-called planetary nebulas), and none of them have a perfectly circular shape. The closest thing to a perfect circle is the Bubble Nebula, which is less perfectly circular than the newly discovered Teleios object.
The article points out that scientists expected to detect X-rays from the Teleios translucent orb, but did not detect such X-rays, leaving them baffled. The article makes it clear that the scientists cannot even figure out how far away or how big this Teleios translucent orb is. But the object is thought to be at least 11 light-years across. Our sun has a diameter only a ten-millionth of a light year. An object 11 light-years in diameter would be something like ten to the 24th power times larger than our sun: that is, more than 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times larger than the sun.
The article quotes scientists talking about the uncertainty of the object's origin. The scientists say this:
"All possible scenarios have their challenges, especially considering the lack of X-ray emission that is expected to be detectable given our evolutionary modelling. While we deem the Type Ia scenario the most likely, we note that no direct evidence is available to definitively confirm any scenario and new sensitive and high-resolution observations of this object are needed."
Given such uncertainty, it is inappropriate for the scientists to have entitled their
preprint "Teleios (G305.4-2.2) -- the mystery of a perfectly shaped new Galactic supernova remnant." They do not know that the mysterious translucent orb they have observed is a supernova remnant. In the preprint, the authors make a confession, followed by some bad reasoning:
"Teleios’s unusually close-to-perfect circular shape, steep radio
spectral index (α = –0.6±0.3), weak polarisation signature and
low surface brightness are rather challenging to reconcile with
typical SNR [supernova remnant] characteristics. However, despite only confirmed
radio-continuum emission, there is little doubt that Teleios is a Galactic SNR as no other known source type could better
fit its radio properties."
The last sentence does not make any sense. You are not entitled to conclude that some strange-looking thing is an example of some known type of thing merely because "no other known source type could better fit its properties." For example, if you see a gigantic flying saucer hovering in the air, you are not entitled to conclude that it is probably a helicopter because "no other known source type could better fit its properties." There is no rule that strange-looking things must be examples of types of things that are already known and understood. Strange-looking things may well be examples of types of things that are not already known and not understood.
