Smoking Light: Epistemic Auditing of the Galactic Centre "Snake" (G359.1−0.2) Kink, Pulsar Candidate G359.13142−0.20005, and Non-Thermal Filament Boundaries
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: In May 2025, public reporting around Chandra and MeerKAT observations of the Galactic Centre non-thermal radio filament G359.1−0.2 ("The Snake") widely stated that a pulsar travelling at up to two million miles per hour had physically fractured a 230-light-year "cosmic bone". This evidence-audited feature and its accompanying 4-tier, 5-status Evidence Ledger (v4) trace each noun and verb of that claim back to the primary observational literature (Gray et al. 1991, 1995; Yusef-Zadeh et al. 2022, 2024; Lower et al. 2024; Richter-Addo et al. 2026; Churazov et al. 2026). We separate direct radio/X-ray observations from morphological inferences and unconfirmed models, highlighting the Parkes (Murriyang) pulsation non-detection at the kink source (<0.03 mJy at 2.5–4 GHz), the reassignment of nearby millisecond pulsar PSR J1744−2946 to the separate "Sunfish" filament, the distinction between flux-freezing in the thermal bulk plasma and non-thermal cosmic-ray electron transport, and the dependency of equipartition field estimates on the unknown proton-to-electron ratio. Finally, we formulate five observational tests—ranked by cost per bit of certainty, beginning with the westward proper-motion falsification vector (\mu_\alpha < 0) and archival MeerKAT width-versus-sensitivity scaling—to resolve whether the kink represents a change in magnetic connectivity, a redistribution of radiating particles, or an emission-selected lane within a broader magnetic environment
Author: CURTIS, PAUL
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225729593
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