The Local Bubble is a region of surprisingly low-density gas that surrounds our solar system and other nearby regions of our galaxy — and it has a violent history. Here's how our solar system ended up in the middle of a cosmic crime scene.
On Jan. 12, 2003, NASA launched the Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer (CHIPS). Its mission was to study the nearby interstellar medium (ISM), which is the superheated and incredibly thin gas that stretches between the stars. CHIPS was designed to measure the ultraviolet radiation (UV) coming from the ISM and build a map.
