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Exclusive: ‘Like ripples on the sea’: Chinese astronomer tells Global Times how the Milky Way got its newly discovered ‘wrinkles’_我的网站

一 |     Kayhan周三作为Battlefield 的一部分在Disrupt SF展示，其业务比TechCrunch第一次报道他们时有了很大的进展；当时，他们正在进行种子轮融资，但现在他们已经站稳脚跟。

二 |     

    Schematic diagram of Milky Way Photo: Courtesy of Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO)
Chinese astronomers have discovered that the Milky Way is not a simple, smoothly warped disk, but contains widespread "wrinkle-like" structures resembling ripples on a water surface, providing new clues to understanding the galaxy's 3D structure and evolutionary history.
The discovery was made by a research team from the Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, using data from the "Milky Way Imaging Scroll Painting" (MWISP) survey. The findings were published online titled "Widespread corrugations superimposed on the Galactic warp in the outer CO disk" in the journal Nature Astronomy on August 7.
For decades, astronomers have known that the Milky Way's disk is not perfectly flat. Instead, its outer regions are slightly bent upward on one side and downward on the other - a structure known as a galactic warp.
However, the latest study shows that this large-scale bending is not the whole story. Smaller-scale vertical fluctuations are also embedded within the warped disk, creating a more complicated 3D structure.
"In many illustrations and in the public imagination, the Milky Way looks like a flat vinyl record," Sun Yan, associate researcher at PMO and the first author of the paper, told the Global Times on Tuesday. "In reality, the outer part of the Milky Way is more like a record that has been heated and deformed, with one side lifted and the other side lowered. That is the warp. On top of this large-scale deformation, there are additional smaller waves, which we call corrugations," Sun explained.
Using a more everyday analogy, Sun compared the Milky Way's structure to a sea surface. The warp is like a large swell that changes the overall height of the ocean, while corrugations are smaller waves superimposed on that swell.
"The two structures exist together. In our data analysis, we first removed the large-scale warp model, which allowed us to reveal the smaller wave-like patterns hidden underneath," Sun said.
The research focused on the Milky Way's outer gas disk rather than the more familiar stellar disk. According to Sun, cold molecular gas and stars provide two complementary ways to study the galaxy.
"Molecular gas is a sensitive probe for studying the vertical structure and dynamics of the galactic disk because it is concentrated near the disk plane and responds strongly to disturbances," she said.
Molecular gas is also the raw material for star formation, meaning its distribution is closely connected with the formation of young stars. The researchers traced this gas through carbon monoxide (CO) emission, which can penetrate regions obscured by interstellar dust and provide a different perspective from optical observations of stars.
The breakthrough was made possible by the MWISP survey, conducted using China's 13.7-meter millimeter-wave telescope. 
"MWISP can be understood as giving the Milky Way a large-scale medical examination using millimeter-wave observations," Sun said.
Previous CO surveys were limited in sensitivity and coverage, making it difficult to accurately study the distant outer regions of the galaxy. In contrast, the latest study identified more than 30,000 molecular cloud samples, covering about half of the Milky Way's outer disk and extending to a distance of about 26 kiloparsecs from the Galactic center.
With such a large dataset, researchers were able to first establish a model of the overall warp and then separate subtle structures from the background. The newly identified corrugations have radial wavelengths of about 3.9-7.9 kiloparsecs and vertical amplitudes of about 100-200 parsecs.
The study also identified a corrugation structure extending about 40 kiloparsecs in azimuth at a distance of around 12.7 kiloparsecs from the Galactic center. In some spiral arm regions, vertical displacements can reach approximately 200 parsecs.
The researchers believe these large-scale vertical fluctuations are likely related to "bending waves" triggered by external gravitational disturbances, suggesting that the Milky Way might have experienced more complex interactions during its evolutionary history.
Although the newly discovered structures sound dramatic, they do not have any direct impact on Earth or the solar system. "Humans cannot directly sense these corrugations," Sun said. "Their scales reach thousands or even tens of thousands of light-years, and even if these structures are evolving, such changes would not be directly perceptible on human timescales."
The study focuses on the outer disk of the Milky Way and does not include the region around the solar system. "There is currently no evidence that these structures have any observable influence on Earth's environment," Sun said.
Instead, their significance lies in what they reveal about the past. Like geological layers recording Earth's history, these galactic structures preserve traces of the Milky Way's evolutionary journey, the researchers explained.
Researchers said future studies combining more precise motion measurements and numerical simulations could further reveal the origins of these structures and their role in the long-term evolution of the Milky Way.
。该公司由多年前从伊朗来美国留学的 Araz Feyzi 和 Siamak Hesar 创立，他们正在应对过去几十年卫星发射数量级增长的自然结果：交通。太空可能看起来像一个大地方，但相对而言，低地球轨道实际上是相当拥挤的。

三 | 随着数以千计的卫星在各种轨道上飞来飞去，以及数以万计的太空垃圾，你的航天器必须要有点动作以避免一个时速20000英里左右的螺丝钉的机会越来越大。当轨道重叠到有可能发生碰撞时，它被称为"会合"--当然，这是一个比"碰撞路线"更中性的术语。Feyzi告诉TechCrunch说：“有很多卫星对卫星的会合；今天还不到10%，但这种模式正在发生变化。会合的数量正在增加，因为我们正在追踪更多的物体，而且有更多的活跃卫星--我们预计这种情况会变得更糟。”他解释说，恶化不仅仅是在频率方面，而是在潜在的灾难性事件发生前的时间减少。这段准备时间非常重要，因为最后一刻的演习既令人毛骨悚然，又浪费燃料--几个小时前本可以通过微小的冲力避免的事情变成了更长的紧急燃烧。通常情况下，卫星运营商向太空指挥部报告他们的位置和轨道--听起来令人印象深刻，但想象一下，一个机场的控制塔突然增长到其正常大小的10倍。他们只能做这么多，这么快，而且他们依靠运营商调用最新的数据和变化。由于天空中有数以千计的卫星，在几个小时或几天的时间内消除轨道冲突--并通过电话决定做什么--不再是一个现实的选择。Kayhan正在努力利用现有的最新的数据使这一过程尽可能地自动化。其中一些是由政府维护的高精度物体数据库，是的，但也有其他跟踪来源，加上来自客户和任何提供信息的人的实时信息。

四 | 他们的Pathfinder平台提供态势感知、会合警告、推荐的新轨道路径--如果你有合适的推进器，它甚至会提供冲力。“我们使用所有这些数据，我们已经开发了大量的专有算法和流程。例如，我们已经开发了一个现代预测引擎，预测物体的路径，这使我们能够非常迅速地计算、模拟和重新模拟物体在空间的运动，”Feyzi说。Feyzi继续说，会合反应的周转时间是以分钟为单位，而不是以天为单位，但它的仔细考虑并没有减少。"当你使用Pathfinder，看着为你准备的建议时，你可以确定它们是安全的--我们已经对它们进行了筛选--其次，它对你来说是可行的，因为它符合你的所有限制：你的推进系统，你的地面接触。

五 | "他还强调，这些能力不受限制，例如，一个雷达天线能转多快。作为一个基于数据的产品，它可以任意地扩展。“软件的魅力，以及我们设计基础设施的方式是它很容易扩展。”Feyzi说：“我们可以搭载今天的每一颗卫星，这对我们来说不是问题。”与其他卫星和任务管理平台的整合也即将到来--不是每个人都想与一个全新的工具合作，所以数据将通过SDK提供。你可能会问，作为一项业务，纯粹的数据游戏是否站得住脚。

六 | Feyzi承认，其他人很可能会尝试相同类型的系统，但Kayhan的领先优势和专业知识是不可低估的。“我们的团队今天有五个天文动力学博士。”他说：“我们处理的数据量和处理量都非常大；除非你发展这些核心能力，使其有效地运行，否则你将无法实现我们正在实现的目标。如果你有数据、资本、人员，是的，也许在两年内，你可以开发出这个平台--迄今为止还没有人做到这一点，但我们两年后的情况与今天的情况大不相同。”在这一点上，Kayhan本身正在扩大其能力，它现在的产品被称为Gamut，旨在提供同样的自动安全检查，但用于发射。安排发射不只是为了等待好天气--还必须把有效载荷放在正确的轨道和位置，也许是在几十或几百个同行中。随着卫星数量的增加，共享任务进入几个不同的轨道的前景迅速成为一个非常复杂的后勤问题。而最关键的是，如果错过了几分钟的发射窗口，将需要一个新的解决方案。“我们发明了一种新方法，利用GPU处理来处理发射筛选，速度快了一个数量级，”Feyzi说。这意味着发射公司可以为更多的可能性做好准备，并在将火箭送入太空所必须通过的文书工作和其他官方程序上实现快进。Gamut仍在开发和测试中，但你可以期待在他们投资最新的融资时很快听到更多关于它的消息。

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