The pairs and clusters of strands stretch for nearly 150 light-years in length and are equally spaced. The bizarre structures are a few million years old and vary in appearance. Some of them resemble harp strings, waterfalls or even the rings around Saturn.
But the true nature of the filaments remains elusive.
Farhad Yusef-Zadeh, a professor of physics and astronomy at Northwestern University, first discovered the strands 35 years ago via radio waves. He determined that the strands were made of cosmic ray electrons that were moving their magnetic fields at near the speed of light. The origin of these strands, however, has remained a mystery.
