For four decades, a dramatic feature in radio images of the Milky Way seemed to rise from the galaxy's violent core, inviting theories of black hole eruptions and ancient supernovae. Now, astrophysicist Kathryn Kreckel and her team at Heidelberg University have revealed that the so-called Galactic center lobe is neither at the galactic center nor a lobe at all — it is a modest bubble of ionized gas a mere 6,520 light-years away, sculpted by the ordinary life and death of massive stars. The discovery is a reminder that the cosmos conceals its truths not only in distant darkness, but sometimes i