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The ‘Radcliffe Wave’ as a Kelvin–Helmholtz instability

Nature volume 583, pages E24–E25 (2020)Cite this article

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The Original Article was published on 07 January 2020

arising from J. Alves et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1874-z (2020)

It has long been recognized that the gaseous and stellar components of the Milky Way and several other disk galaxies exhibit undulatory displacements (‘corrugations’) ranging from 1 kpc to several kiloparsecs in wavelength and up to 350 pc in amplitude. Various mechanisms, including gravitational instabilities, collisions of high-velocity clouds and the undular mode of the Parker instability, have been proposed to account for these features1. Calculations presented here suggest that the wavelike character of the recently discovered2 2.7-kpc spatially and kinematically coherent complex of interstellar clouds in the solar neighbourhood—the ‘Radcliffe Wave’—may be the result of a Kelvin–Helmholtz instability (KHI) arising at the interface between the Galactic disk and the non-corotating halo, a process that may also explain the scalloped outermost edge of the Galaxy3. The KHI has been shown to account for many and varied morphological and dynamical effects in the astronomical environment ranging in scale from comet tails to galaxies, and the inferred oscillation about the Galactic midplane of the nearly azimuthally aligned Radcliffe Wave is indicative of a wave-generating shear origin.

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All data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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  1. Department of Physical Sciences, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, FL, USA

    Robert Fleck

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Correspondence to Robert Fleck.

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Fleck, R. The ‘Radcliffe Wave’ as a Kelvin–Helmholtz instability. Nature 583, E24–E25 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2476-5

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