Un equipo internacional de astrofísicos, en el que participan varios grupos de investigación españoles, ha descubierto una fuente de rayos gamma de muy alta energía en la región de las lejanas galaxias 3C 66A y 3C 66B. Esta nueva emisión gamma, observada desde el telescopio MAGIC de La Palma (Canarias), no se ajusta a lo que esperaban encontrar los científicos, que ya han propuesto tres hipótesis para explicar su origen.
An international team of astrophysicists, involving several research groups in Spain, has discovered a source of very high energy gamma rays in the region of the distant galaxies 3C 66A and 3C 66B. This new gamma emission, observed from the MAGIC telescope in La Palma (Canary Islands) is not consistent with what scientists expected to find, and has resulted in them suggesting three hypotheses to explain their origin. In 2007, the MAGIC telescope, located in the Roque de los Muchachos observatory on the Canary island of La Palma, spent more than 50 hours examining the 3C 66A galaxy region, which is about 3 billion light years from Earth. The results of those observations led to the discovery of a source of very high energy gamma rays (over 150 billion electron volts), as published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters journal.