This gorgeus astro-soap-bubble is a freaky nebula discovered last July by Dave Jurasevich of the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, who called it the "Cygnus Bubble." New Scientist has the explanation, courtesy of Adam Frank of the University of Rochester: "'Spherical ones are very rare.' One explanation is that the image is looking down the throat of a typical cylindrical nebula. However, it is still remarkably symmetrical, Frank says."

Giant 'soap bubble' found floating in space

(Image: Travis A. Rector/U of Alaska Anchorage/Heidi Schweiker/NOAO)

  • Mojave

    #4 how would the “electrical universe” model explain this bubble? I think it’s more just a circular nebulae that happens to look like a spherical bubble.

  • Anonymous

    It’s a freaky huge and slightly reflective Dyson sphere!

  • Bemopolis

    They are rare, but I don’t know if I’d call spherical nebulae *freaky*. (The example better known before this one is the planetary nebula Abell 39: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050728.html ) The reason that they are rare is that. while the wind from the central star of a planetary nebula is spherically symmetric, mass loss from the star before its current phase is usually (for a variety of reasons) aspherical.

    But even then, in cases of nonsymmetric densities can produce reasonably spherical nebulae; for instance, NGC 7635 (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap051107.html ), which is a bubble blown within a medium with a linear gradient. The star responsible is way off center, but the bubble is still spheroidal (albeit roughened considerably by additional outflows from surrounding gas).

  • jahknow

    This web site is filthy! Let’s clean it up!

  • hoffmanbike

    @jahknow – ??????

  • Davidget

    @Hoffmanbike – ??????

  • Anonymous

    Clearly this is a Player Owned Station.

  • Uniquack

    There is a fascinating alternative explanation out there– though some might call it scientific blasphemy– plasma cosmology. Take a look at thunderbolts.info and holoscience.com

    The idea is that the electric force is actually the predominant force at astrophysical scales (and perhaps has effects on weather and geology). Vast currents flowing through plasmas in space would cause many of the phenomena seen by astronomers.

    Who knows?

  • wolfiesma

    Cory, can’t we get a “like” button like on they have on facebook? Cause I would like to click “like” on this picture/post.

  • Uniquack

    #8, I’m not enough of an expert to explain it! If you read up on those sites however, what they propose is that plasmas bearing currents behave in very interesting, self organizing ways. Of course spheres, minimizing the surface area of certain charge interactions, are probably the simplest, but other things such as Birkland currents cause fascinating geometries to exist- filaments, toroids, etc, which, viewed from different angles on Earth appear as many of the astronomic formations we and perhaps our ancestors saw in the sky. In this case, a plasma sphere might only appear visible from earth where as a circle, the way an x-ray of a table tennis ball might appear.

  • Brainspore

    Shouldn’t that thing have a tree and a pajamas-clad Hugh Jackman inside?

  • MichaelRN

    If you pan the telescope a bit to the right you’ll see that the source of the cosmic bubble (and many more like it) is, in fact, the Lawrence Welk Nebula.

  • Anonymous

    The Flaming Lips show is about to start! Get Wayne in there NOW!