A new model suggests the solar system is surrounded by a gigantic magnetic tunnel.
The proposal comes from University of Toronto astronomer Jennifer West, who is basing the hypothesis on two structures in the sky: The North Polar Spur and the Fan Region.
After building a computer model, West believes the structures, made of rope-like filaments, sit 350 light-years from Earth and are about 1,000 light-years long.
The structures, first observed in the 1960s, were initially documented as being separate, but West and her colleagues found the two form a connection that 'looks like a tunnel around our solar system,' according to a press release.
West and her team provide a simple example to explain the idea: 'A curving tunnel, with lines formed by the tunnel lights and road lane markers, forms a similar geometry to the proposed model of the North Polar Spur and Fan Region.'
'If we were to look up in the sky we would see this tunnel-like structure in just about every direction we looked – that is, if we had eyes that could see radio light,' West said in a statement.
Scientists provide a simple example to explain the idea: 'A curving tunnel, with lines formed by the tunnel lights and road lane markers, forms a similar geometry to the proposed model of the North Polar Spur and Fan Region' (pictured)
The North Polar Spur is a large ridge of hot, X-ray- and radio-emitting gas that rises above the plane of the galaxy.
It appears as a massive yellow cloud that begins near Sagittarius and extends to Scorpius, Lupus and past Centaurus.
A Harvard paper published in 1980 suggests the ionized gas within the mysterious
