We owe our existence to a tiny aberration. Exactly 13.8 billion years ago, the Big Bang occurred.
Almost, but not completely:some parts of the cloud were slightly denser than others. And only for this reason planets, stars and galaxies exist today. The fact is that denser areas exhibit higher gravitational forces that attract gas from the environment. Therefore, over time, more and more matter was concentrated in these regions. However, the space between them became more and more empty. Over the course of 13 billion years, a kind of spongy structure has formed: large "holes" without any matter with regions between them, where thousands of galaxies are gathered in a small space in the form of clusters.
Still image from simulation,showing the hot gas distribution (left) compared to the eROSITA X-ray image of the Abell 3391/95 system (right). Credit: Reiprich et al.Astronomy and astrophysics.
And, if the theory is correct, galaxies and clusters are allequally should have been bound by the remains of this gas, like a cobweb. "It is estimated that more than half of all baryonic matter in our universe is contained in these filaments: it is the form of matter that makes up stars and planets, just like ourselves," explains Professor Dr. Thomas Reiprich of the Argelander Institute for Astronomy at the University of Bonn. However, these fibers could not be observed earlier: due to the huge expansion, the substance in them is diluted. It contains only ten particles per cubic meter.
However, with a new measuring device,With the eROSITA Space Telescope, Reiprich and his colleagues were able to see the gas for the first time. “EROSITA has very sensitive detectors for the type of X-ray radiation that comes from the gas in the filaments,” explains Reiprich. "Its large field of view also helped: like a wide-angle lens, it captures most of the sky in one measurement at a very high resolution." This allows you to get detailed images of huge objects such as fibers in a relatively short time.
This view shows eROSITA (right; leftsimulation again for comparison) very faint regions of thin gas are also visible. Credit: Left: Reiprich et al., Space Science Reviews, 177, 195; right: Reiprich et al.Astronomy and astrophysics.
In their study, scientists examined the heavenlyan object named Abell 3391/95. It is a system of three galaxy clusters located about 700 million light years away. EROSITA images show not only clusters and numerous individual galaxies, but also gas filaments connecting these structures. The entire filament is 50 million light years long. But it could be even bigger: Scientists speculate that the images show only part of the fiber.
Optical image of the Abell 3391/95 system. Credit: Reiprich et al.Astronomy & Astrophysics.
“We compared our observations with the resultssimulations that reconstruct the evolution of the Universe,” explains Reiprich. — eROSITA images are strikingly similar to computer graphics. This suggests that the widely accepted standard model of the evolution of the universe is correct.”
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