A massive cosmic shock wave spanning 6.5 million light-years has been studied by a team of astronomers, explaining that it is the largest visible on Earth.
These giant shock waves are larger than our entire galaxy and form when clusters of galaxies collide, according to researchers led by the University of Hamburg.
Our universe is inhabited by galaxies that are not evenly distributed, but are concentrated in huge structures, the largest of which contains thousands of galaxies.
Sometimes two galaxy clusters begin to attract each other by the force of gravity, which leads to an inevitable collision – generating spectacular “fireworks” that can be observed with the help of modern radio telescopes, such as MeerKAT in South Africa.
A pair of combined galaxy clusters produce cosmic shock waves that pass through the newly formed cluster, and astronomers led by the University of Hamburg in Germany have created images of the largest ever observed.
It originates from the Abell 3667 galaxy cluster and may give an idea of the structure of shock waves and galaxy clusters, according to astronomers.
Magnification of the largest of the two shock waves, where the complex filamentous structure is obvious. Most of the visible galaxies are not part of a cluster, either in the background or in front of it
These giant shock waves are larger than our entire galaxy and form when clusters of galaxies collide, according to researchers led by the University of Hamburg.
The two galactic clusters that produced the giant shock wave came together about a billion years ago, producing one of the most vigorous events since the Big Bang.
Modern radio telescopes can witness the propagation of a pair of giant shock waves produced by the two galactic clusters as they pass through the newly formed cluster, similar to the sound booms of supersonic planes.
“These structures are full of surprises and are much more complex than we originally thought,” said Professor Francesco de Gasperin, lead author of the study.
The shock waves act as giant particle accelerators, similar to the Large Hadron Collider, where electrons accelerate close to the speed of light.
Our universe is inhabited by galaxies that are not evenly distributed, but are concentrated in huge structures, the largest containing thousands of galaxies
Sometimes two galaxy clusters begin to attract each other by gravity, leading to an inevitable collision – generating spectacular “fireworks” that can be observed with modern radio telescopes such as MeerKAT in South Africa.
When these fast electrons cross a magnetic field, they emit the radio waves we see from Earth using telescopes like MeerKAT.
The shocks are strung from an intricate pattern of bright filaments that trace the location of the two giant lines of magnetic field and the regions where electrons accelerate in the wave.
These shock waves are still propagating through the galaxy cluster formed by the collision at an incredible 932 miles per second or 3.3 million miles per hour.
This means that the strike front will cross the entire Earth in the time it takes to read this sentence, explained Prof. de Gasperin.
The size of the main shock wave is impressive, covering the entire width of the galaxy cluster for a total of 6.5 million light-years. By comparison, the Milky Way, the galaxy in which we live, is more than 60 times smaller than this shock wave.
“The presence of shocks in the Abell 3667 is detected by abrupt changes in the properties of the hot gas tracked by its X-ray emission,” added Professor Alexis Finogenov of the University of Helsinki, who supported the study by analyzing X-ray data collected by the XMM Observatory. Newton.
The findings are published in the journal Astronomy and astrophysics.
WHAT IS THE SPACE NETWORK OF THREADS OF WHICH THE UNIVERSE IS COMPOSED?
The “ordinary” matter that makes up everything we can see corresponds to only five percent of the known universe. The rest is made up of so-called “dark matter”.
For decades, at least half of this ordinary matter has escaped discovery, but scientists have in recent years made the first direct observations of a “space network” of strands stretching between galaxies.
These fibers are made of gas at temperatures between 100,000 ° C (180,032 ° F) and 10 million ° C (50 million ° F), and experts believe that these structures may explain the “missing” ordinary matter.
Studies have estimated that about 95% of the universe is made up of a mixture of “dark matter” and “dark energy”, which makes its presence felt only by its gravitational pull, but has never been seen directly.
What is less well known, however, is that about half of the usual matter is also missing.
In 2015, a team led by Dominic Eckert, a scientist at the University of Geneva, claimed that these “missing baryons” – subatomic particles made up of three quarks – were discovered because of their X-ray signature in a massive cluster of galaxies known as Abell 2744.
Using the XMM-Newton Space Telescope, the researchers found that matter was concentrated in a network of nodes and connections connected by huge strands known as the “space network.”
Large-scale studies of galaxies show that the distribution of ordinary matter in the universe is not homogeneous.
Instead, under the action of gravity, matter concentrates in so-called filamentous structures, forming a network of nodes and connections called a “space network.”
The regions that experience the highest gravitational force collapse and form nodes in the network, such as Abell 2744.
Researchers focused on Abell 2744 – a massive cluster of galaxies with a complex distribution of dark and luminous matter in the center – to make their discovery.
Comparable to neural networks, these nodes are then connected to each other by strands, where researchers identify the presence of gas and therefore the missing ordinary matter that is thought to make up the universe.