Two ORCs Align in Space -in Another Galaxy

The image above is described as a "graphic representation," which sounds like it would be a photo, but in this case I'm pretty sure it's an illustration. It's meant to represent two overlapping "odd radio signals," or ORCS. Now, Tolkien fans and D&D players know what an Orc is (they are bad news), but in this case it's a huge ring of magnetized plasma, hundreds of thousands of light years wide, and only visible in radio wavelengths. They've never been seen overlapping until now, and this "Venn diagram" is particularly large and powerful. It was spotted by citizen scientists observing distant space through a radio telescope in Europe called the Low Frequency Array. 

Read some of what we know about these ORCs at Gizmodo. What we don't know covers even more ground, but studying them could lead to breakthroughs in the formation of black holes and the behavior of the universe. -via kottke 


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