One of the most mysterious structures found in the galaxy is this, the Waterfall Nebula (also known as HH-222), which lies about 1,500 light-years away in the Orion Molecular Cloud.
Try as th
ey might, astronomers aren't particularly sure how this thing formed. One hypothesis suggests that the gas filaments are the result of stellar winds blowing from a young star that lies hidden in the nearby molecular cloud of Orion, but this is largely seen as an incomplete theory since the fainter streams of gas appear to converge on an unusual non-thermal radio source near the upper left of the structure. Another hypothesis suggests that two objects in a binary system are embedded in the gas like a neutron star, white dwarf, pulsar or black hole, spitting out radio waves in a jet from the source. Though this is largely discounted because the objects listed above generally spit out large quantities of x-rays in addition to radio waves, which haven't been detected thus far.
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