Meet the ‘Giant Elephant Trunks,’ Mysterious Cosmic Structures 10 Times Bigger Than the ‘Pillars of Creation’

By Adam Mann Ursa Major, the Tadpole Galaxy, the Crab Nebula — when it comes to naming objects in space, it sometimes seems like astronomers wish they’d gone into zoology. Continuing in this long tradition, a researcher has recently identified mammoth column-shaped structures carved from gas and dust that he has called Giant Elephant’s Trunks. Regular-size …