# DDA 2015 – Solving the Mystery of the Fermi Bubbles?

This is one of a series of notes taken during the 2015 meeting of the AAS Division on Dynamical Astronomy, 3-7 May, at CalTech. An index to this series (all the papers presented at the meeting) is here.

David F. Bartlett (UC Boulder)

#### Abstract

The Fermi Bubbles are large structures that stretch symmetrically between galactic latitudes of -55 degrees and +55 degrees and between galactic longitudes of -45 degrees and +45 degrees. For almost a decade they have been under the intense scrutiny of the Fermi-Large Area Telescope, a gamma-ray detector in orbit about the earth. The Bubbles remain mysterious: are the gamma-rays – with energies up to a few hundred GeV – produced by hadrons or do they come from inverse Compton scattering of galactic electrons with the low energy interstellar radiation field? Why are the edges of the bubbles only 3 degree wide? How old are the bubbles? For some time we have been considering a non-Newtonian cosinusoidal potential $U=-\dfrac{G M}{r} \cos(k_0 r)$, and its complement, a non-Coulombic electric potential $U=Q \exp(-k_0 r)$. In both cases, $k_0 = 2 \pi/400$ pc. In this talk we present evidence that our putative potentials acting in concert can help answer the mysteries of the Bubbles.

• Oh my…