Our whole solar system appears to be wrapped in a bubble.

The bubble is about 300 light years long (about 1,764,000,000,000,000 miles), and its walls are made of hot gas reaching temps of about a million degrees.

Scientists call it the “Local Bubble” or “local hot bubble” and is shaped a little like a peanut.

Scientists believe it was formed by a supernova, the largest explosions in space. One supernova blasts out more energy in less than a second than our sun gives off in a million years. A single explosion can outshine an entire galaxy.

But some scientists, in recent years, cast doubt on the Local Bubble model, saying the radiation could be the result of “charge exchange” — passing solar winds stealing electrons and thereby emitting x-ray radiation.

Scientists from the University of Miami in Coral Gables picked up the gauntlet and developed a sensor to measure charge exchange radiation and fired it out of Earth’s atmosphere atop a small NASA rocket two years ago.

“It only took about five minutes for the detector to take a reading. Analyzing the data, the scientists determined that only 40% of the background x-ray emanates from within our solar system. The rest of the glow, they say, must come from the searing gaseous walls of a big bubble we live in.”

[SOURCE](http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/27/tech/innovation/space-local-bubble/index.html?hpt=hp_t2)