Weird bright blog of gas spotted in deep space baffles astronomers

[Dryson]

https://www.rt.com/viral/379203-nebula-mystery-bright-space/

A vast luminous nebula spotted in a distant universe has baffled astronomers as there is no obvious source for the powerful light being emitted.
The glowing ‘blob of gas’ was spotted by researchers at Santa Cruz University as they searched for the most dense galaxy environments in the early universe.

It could be that atoms traveling close to each other are transferring energy back and forth between each atom causing the luminosity effect.

 

[Warp Core Breach]

A distant universe, eh? That's pretty fascinating.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

The original article states "the distant universe".
http://news.ucsc.edu/2017/02/mammoth-nebula.html

Cai and his coauthors considered several possible mechanisms that could be powering the Lyman-alpha emission from the nebula. The most likely explanations involve radiation or outflows from an active galactic nucleus (AGN) that is strongly obscured by dust so that only a faint source can be seen associated with the nebula. An AGN is powered by a supermassive black hole actively feeding on gas in the center of a galaxy, and it is usually an extremely bright source of light (quasars being the most luminous AGNs in visible light).

The intense radiation from an AGN can ionize the gas around it (called photoionization), and this may be one mechanism at work in MAMMOTH-1. When ionized hydrogen in the nebula recombines it would emit Lyman-alpha radiation. Another possible mechanism powering the Lyman-alpha emissions is shock heating by a powerful outflow of gas from the AGN.

The researchers described several lines of evidence supporting the existence of a hidden AGN energizing the nebula, including the dynamics of the gas and emissions from other elements besides hydrogen, notably helium and carbon.

"It has all the hallmarks of an AGN, but we don't see anything in our optical images. I expect there's a quasar that is so obscured by dust that most of its light is hidden," Prochaska said.