An exceptional object in our cosmic neighborhood discovered

Does anyone know how this compares with NASA's usual routine for announcing cool discoveries? The internet seems to be getting all excited about this, but if this kind of vague press conference announcement is just their standard way of announcing a new funky-looking cloud of gas, a lot of UFO hunters are going to be disappointed...<p>Edit: Not that I don't personally find funky-looking clouds of gas fascinating, but if you google 'exceptional object' right now the top results are all conspiracy theory websites.

I'd say it was the two galaxy sized bubbles immediately above and below the plane of the Milky Way that were just discovered but they used the Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope for those.<p><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/8125127/Giant-space-bubbles-baffle-astronomers.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/8125127/Giant-space...</a>

<i>NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has unveiled a previously unseen structure centred in the Milky Way. The feature spans 50,000 light-years and may be the remnant of an eruption from a supersized black hole at the centre of our galaxy. "What we see are two gamma-ray-emitting bubbles that extend 25,000 light-years north and south of the galactic centre," said Doug Finkbeiner, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who first recognised the feature. "We don't fully understand their nature or origin..."</i><p>Source: <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/picturesoftheday/8125431/Pictures-of-the-day-11-November-2010.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/picturesoft...</a>

My guess would be a nearby black hole.

Could be a brown-dwarf-sized companion to our star, a possible answer for the relative scarcity of objects beyond 50 or so au.

I hope "exceptional object in our cosmic neighborhood" doesn't mean "big astereoid coming our way" ;)

More information URL: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/main/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/main/index.html</a>

Aliens!

I take it this means "something exceptional that is not an iPad."