A vast network of nearly invisible filaments that span the universe and connect it have finally been discovered glowing in the dark.
In the pitch black region of intergalactic space, astronomers have directly detected the faint glow of these filaments as they stretch into the abyss. Until now, the only detections of this vast network have been seen around celestial objects such as quasars, the brightest lights in the universe.
Well, we witnessed it in the darkness where most of the web lurks.
“Prior to this latest discovery, we found filament-like structures underneath what corresponded to streetlights.” says Christopher Martin, an astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology.. “Now you can see without a lamp.”
Although there are vast distances between objects in the universe, it is not a series of isolated islands, as you might imagine at first glance. Our cosmological models suggest that there is a vast web of cosmic dark matter, threads of which stretch across great distances, connecting galaxy to galaxy and star cluster to star cluster.
Hydrogen from the sparse intergalactic medium collects and flows along these filaments, which coalesced by gravity in the early universe. This hydrogen is thought to be fed to growing galaxies, providing them with fresh material to make bright stars.
In a universe filled with bright things, it’s not so easy to spot the dim glow of cold, diffuse hydrogen. But finding it is an important goal of astronomy and cosmology.
It can give us information about how the universe continues to evolve and grow, and where the universe’s invisible dark matter and lost ordinary matter lurk. An estimated 60 percent of the hydrogen formed in the Big Bang is thought to exist in the universe. cosmic web.
“The cosmic web depicts the structure of our universe.” martin says. “That’s where most of the normal matter, or baryonic matter, in our galaxy resides, and it directly tracks the location of dark matter.”
So Martin and his colleagues designed a specialized dim-seeking instrument to seek out the most elusive parts of the cosmic web. lyman alpha radiation – Spectral fingerprint of hydrogen absorbing and re-emitting radiation. The Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI) is located at the WM Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
The universe is full of various types of light, such as the glow of our solar system and the glow of galaxies. If you’re observing from Earth, the light is further complicated by atmospheric light. So Martin designed a way to subtract that light from KCWI’s observations.
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“We are looking at two different parts of the sky, A and B.” he explains.
“Because the filament structures are at different distances in the two directions within the patch, we can take the background light from image B and subtract it from A, and vice versa, leaving just the structure.I 2019 I ran detailed simulations of this in 2017 to convince myself that this method would work.”
The researchers then surveyed parts of the sky looking for telltale concentrations of Lyman alpha radiation.
Because the universe is expanding, wavelengths of light that are farther away are attenuated toward the red end of the spectrum. Therefore, the redder the emission, the further away the light is. This allowed the team to create his three-dimensional radiation map of light reaching us over 10 to 12 billion years.
This represents a period in the history of the universe after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, when everything was still in the early stages of formation. The result is our first glimpse of the complex cosmic web in the darkest corners of the universe. Researchers say this provides a new way to trace the cosmic web, trace matter in the universe, and learn how everything came together.
“We are very excited,” says astrophysicist and instrument scientist Mateusz Matuszewski. “How this new tool can help us learn about more distant filaments and when the first stars and black holes formed,” the Caltech professor said.
This study natural astronomy.