Astronomers have discovered what they call a cosmic “interstellar tunnel”, a vast channel of superheated gas that appears to link our solar system with faraway stars across the Milky Way.

The discovery was made by a team from the Max Planck Institute, who used data from the eROSITA X-ray telescope. Their research mapped a large, glowing region of hot, low-density gas that surrounds the Sun, known as the Local Hot Bubble (LHB).

This bubble was formed by several supernova explosions that occurred millions of years ago. It stretches about 300 light-years across, creating a huge space filled with hot plasma.

Astronomers divided the sky into tiny sections, like pixels on a screen, to study how temperature, dust, and gas vary across space. They noticed that “the temperature of the LHB exhibits a north-south dichotomy at high latitudes,” meaning the heat isn’t spread evenly but differs between the northern and southern regions of the galaxy.

By combining all their data, scientists spotted a glowing corridor of gas reaching out toward the constellation Centaurus, and possibly another one stretching toward Canis Major.

These findings suggest that the Local Hot Bubble might be part of a larger network of interstellar tunnels connecting star-forming regions and pockets of hot gas across the galaxy.

The idea of such a network isn’t new; scientists have long suspected that space near our solar system isn’t empty but filled with cavities, tunnels, and bubbles of heated gas.

However, until now, there wasn’t enough data to prove it. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute said the “average thermal pressure in this bubble is lower than expected, indicating that it might be open in some directions.”

Scientists now plan to study whether these ‘tunnels’ actually connect the Local Hot Bubble to nearby star-forming regions, sometimes called planetary nurseries.