Astronomers Baffled by a Suspicious, Perfectly Round Sphere in Our Galaxy

Today, in questions you didn't know you needed the answer to: Is there such a thing as a perfect ball? And if there were, would it contain the secrets of the universe? To wit, a spherical object lurking in our galaxy is so perfectly round that astronomers can't explain how it was formed. Dubbed "Teleios" after the Greek word for "perfect," the object is what's known as a supernova remnant (SNR), a glowing cloud of hot gases and other material left behind after a massive star dies in a powerful explosion called a supernova. And it's definitely earned its nickname. According to the astronomers' findings, as reported in a pre-print study accepted for publication in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, this is one of the most circular galactic SNRs ever found. "The shape indicates Teleios has remained relatively untouched by its environment," said lead author Miroslav Filipovic, an astronomer at Western Sydney University, in an essay for The Conversation written with h ... Read full article.