The early universe was a much different world than the one pervading our cosmos today. Galaxies were still forming, and stars were just condensing into their luminous selves. Much of what we see today is the result of massive, hot gas clouds with the alchemical elements needed to create the cosmic objects we see in the heavens today - which is why a new discovery has scientists excited.
A collaboration of scientists utilizing the European Space Agency's Planck space telescope have found the first definitive gas filament connecting two galaxy clusters.
The scientists identified a bridge of hot gas connecting the galaxy clusters Abell 399 and Abell 401. The galaxy clusters are located approximately 10 million light-years apart, and both lie around 1 billion light-years from planet Earth.
The bridge of gas is so hot the scientists estimate that its temperature is somewhere around 175 million degrees Fahrenheit.
The Planck telescope was first launched in order to study leftover remnants from the Big Bang known as the cosmic microwave background (CMB).
CMB travels through space on a faint spectrum and interacts with various objects along the way, illuminating previously unseen phenomena to astronomers. CMB has been used to detect galaxy clusters in the past, but this is the first time that a gas bridge between galaxy clusters has been conclusively located thanks to CMB. When CMB interacts with hot gas, a Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect is observed.
The reason the discovery is important is because this gas bridge could very well be a leftover from the original cosmic web of gas that permeated the universe after the Big Bang. By studying this gas bridge, scientists can learn more about the universe's infant structure, as well as glean insights into how many elements came to be.
Read the full published study at Astronomy & Astrophysics.
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