The Economist (US), March 8th, 1997
NEAR the centre of the Milky Way lurks something at least as weird as dark matter, but definitely visible. Through their radio telescopes, astronomers can see a bright strand, 150 light years long and a couple wide, and kinked in two places. They call it the Snake.
Since its discovery in 1991 by Andrew Gray at the University of Sydney, the Snake has been a puzzle. Other "threads", as they are known, have been found inside the Galactic Centre Lobe, a barrel-shaped region of space where the interstellar gas is slightly more rarefied than outside it. Among the many exotic theories of their gen...
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