  An unresolved X-ray glow (at energies above a few kiloelectronvolts) was
discovered about 25 years ago and found to be coincident with the Galactic disk
-the Galactic ridge X-ray emission. This emission has a spectrum characteristic
of a 1e8 K optically thin thermal plasma, with a prominent iron emission line
at 6.7 keV. The gravitational well of the Galactic disk, however, is far too
shallow to confine such a hot interstellar medium; instead, it would flow away
at a velocity of a few thousand kilometres per second, exceeding the speed of
sound in gas. To replenish the energy losses requires a source of 10^{43}
erg/s, exceeding by orders of magnitude all plausible energy sources in the
Milky Way. An alternative is that the hot plasma is bound to a multitude of
faint sources, which is supported by the recently observed similarities in the
X-ray and near-infrared surface brightness distributions (the latter traces the
Galactic stellar distribution). Here we report that at energies of 6-7 keV,
more than 80 per cent of the seemingly diffuse X-ray emission is resolved into
discrete sources, probably accreting white dwarfs and coronally active stars.

Astrophysics of Galaxies;High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena