Dennis Overbye is a name that has popped up a lot in this blog for a number of reasons: 1) he mainly writes about space and the cosmos—an area that gets a lot of attention here; 2) he writes for the New York Times, probably the best and most prolific news publications out there; and 3) he’s a damn good writer. Overbye’s latest story is about the discovery of mysterious, giant energy bubbles in the center of our galaxy, and as always, he writes a great one-sentence intro paragraph to draw the reader in: “Something big is going on at the center of the galaxy, and astronomers are happy to say they don’t know what it is.” He’s also got a sense of humor later in the story: “Another option [for the source of the bubbles] is a gigantic belch from the black hole known to reside, like Jabba the Hutt, at the center of the Milky Way.”
In the second paragraph, he gives the more specific details, including the important and fascinating fact that these bubbles “extend 25,000 light years up and down from each side of the galaxy and contain the energy equivalent to 100,000 supernova explosions.” The first half of the article emphasizes the mystery behind these bubbles (“The source of the bubbles is a mystery” is the short first sentence of the fourth paragraph), as well as the surprise and excitement felt by scientists. Then Overbye moves to the less interesting, more arcane, but still crucial and necessary-to-include science/theory concerning these bubbles. And at the end, he connects this seemingly useless discovery to a popular buzz phrase in science journalism today: dark matter. This helps remind readers why this kind of news is important and why we should care.
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