Ghostly Sky Circles That Baffled Astronomers Might Be Explosions From Distant Galaxies
We dubbed them odd radio circles or ORCs. They continue to puzzle us, but new data from South Africa’s MeerKAT telescope are helping us solve the mystery. We can now see each ORC is centered on a galaxy too faint to be detected earlier. The circles are most likely enormous explosions of hot gas, about a million light-years across, emanating from the central galaxy. Our paper showing these results has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication by Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society....