"These observations are challenging our understanding of intergalactic gas and giving us a new laboratory to test and refine our models."įollow us, Facebook and Google+. "We think there may be more gas contained in the small, dense clumps within the cosmic web than is seen in our models," Cantalupo said. New astronomical research is beginning to reveal an invisible scaffold of dark matter known as the Cosmic Web, an intergalactic network that transformed the Universe from a chaotic Big Bang into the structured beauty of the present day cosmos. The Millennium Simulation featured in this clip was run in 2005 by the Virgo Consortium, an international group of astrophysicists from Germany, the United K. The researchers estimated that more than 10 times the amount of normal diffuse gas exists in the nebula than predicted. From Season 10, Episode 1: Secrets of the Cosmic Web. Thanks to gravity, ordinary matter follows its distribution, so filaments of ionized gas, such as those found by Cantalupo and his team, should echo the placement of dark matter. Filaments of the missing material stretch between the universe. Galaxies sit within halos of dark matter. Although scientists have not yet been able to directly observe dark matter, research shows that it makes up almost 85 percent of the matter in the universe. The structure of "normal" material in the universe is thought to mirror the distribution of dark matter. "It's huge - at least twice as large as any nebula detected before, and it extends well beyond the galactic environment of the quasar." "This is a very exceptional object," Cantalupo said. The nebula of gas gathered along the filament spans almost 2 million light-years across the universe, stretching out between the galaxies. Invisible in itself, dark matter still exerts gravitational forces on visible light and ordinary. Cantalupo and his team built a special filter for the 10-meter Keck Telescope in Hawaii to detect only the shifted wavelength. The cosmic web suggested by the standard model is mainly made up of mysterious 'dark matter'. "It provides a terrific insight into the overall structure of the universe."Īs the universe expands, it stretches the light coming from the quasar, which lies approximately 10 billion light-years away. Xavier Prochaska, also of UC Santa Cruz, said in the statement. "The quasar is illuminating diffuse gas on scales well beyond any we've seen before, giving us the first picture of the extended gas between galaxies," J. Such quasars can light up not only the gas around the galaxy but also the material stretching away from it. Quasars are born from supermassive black holes, and lie at the center of the galaxies, in some of the densest parts of the web. Cantalupo and his team used the radiation from a quasar to light up the threads stretching between galaxies.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |