Democracy Dies in Darkness

Astronomers say mysterious galactic ‘wave’ may have once washed over Earth

Stretching across the night sky, a recently found chain of star-forming clouds is undulating through the galaxy

February 20, 2024 at 11:00 a.m. EST

An illustration shows the Radcliffe Wave and its oscillatory pattern as it moves through the galaxy. The light blue curve shows the overall shape of the traveling wave, while the magenta and green lines show the wave’s minimum and maximum excursions above and below the galactic plane. ( Harvard Astronomy Department)

6 min

Astronomers are still discovering strange things in space, and the latest is something they’ve named the Radcliffe Wave. This wave-shaped chain of star-forming clouds is the largest coherent structure ever seen in our galaxy — 9,000 light-years from end to end, stretching across the night sky from Canis Major to Cygnus, with Orion in between.