2023-07-16 06:00:04
The starry sky may appear evenly distributed to the naked eye. However, this is far from the case. The stars are all connected in a huge cosmic web that binds the galaxies across the Universe like the threads of a spider’s web, leaving incomprehensible stretches of emptiness between them. Two articles recently published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters reveal that this colossal cosmic web extends almost to the dawn of the Universe. .
A model of the cosmic web, showing bright galaxies clumping together where gas filaments meet.
Image: ESA / Springel et al., Virgo Consortium
Using data from the James Webb space telescope, astronomers have discovered a gigantic gaseous filament made up of 10 closely packed galaxies, stretching over more than 3 million light years. According to the researchers, this ancient filament of gas and stars may represent the oldest known filament in the cosmic web.
Xiaohui Fan, an astronomer at the University of Arizona and a member of the research team (Scientific research is primarily the all of the actions undertaken in sight…), was surprised by the length (The length of an object is the distance between its two extremities…) and the fineness of this filament.
The newly discovered filament formed when the Universe was still young, just 830 million years following the Big Bang. It is anchored by an extremely luminous supermassive black hole (In astrophysics, a supermassive black hole is a black hole with a mass of approximately one million…), a quasar (A “quasi-stellar radiation source” (quasar ), (quasi-stellar radio…), in its center.
It is this luminous black hole that allowed scientists to discover the filament. Xiaohui Fan and his team work within the framework of the ASPIRE project, which aims to study the influence of the first black holes on galactic evolution. Feige Wang, an astrophysicist at the University of Arizona and senior program manager, said it’s one of the oldest filamentary structures ever found associated with a distant quasar.
Researchers believe that black holes helped form the cosmic web by acting as gravity wells attracting matter (Matter is the stuff that makes up any body that has a tangible reality. Its…), and sometimes throwing it thanks to the “cosmic winds” which form around (Autour is the name that the avian nomenclature in French language (update) gives…) extremely active quasars. Gravity keeps these strands of stars and dust connected, even as winds scatter them across the Universe.
The researchers believe that over time, the filament will condense into a cluster of galaxies, similar to the Berenice’s Hair cluster (Berenice’s Hair is a fairly dim constellation that sits just…), located regarding 330 million light-years from Earth.
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