Latest news with #KonstantinosMigkas
Daily Record
24-06-2025
- Science
- Daily Record
Massive thread of hot gas found linking galaxies and it's 10 times the mass of the Milky Way
The thread could contain some of the Universe's 'missing' matter, addressing a decades-long mystery Astronomers have uncovered a colossal, searing-hot filament of gas linking four galaxy clusters in the Shapley Supercluster - a discovery that could finally solve the mystery of the Universe's missing matter. This giant thread, 10 times the mass of the Milky Way and stretching 23 million light-years, is one of the best confirmations yet that vast, faint filaments connect the Universe's largest structures in a cosmic web. Over one-third of the 'normal' matter in the local Universe - the visible stuff making up stars, planets, galaxies, life - is missing. It hasn't yet been seen, but it's needed to make our models of the cosmos work properly, NASA says. Said models suggest that this elusive matter might exist in long strings of gas, or filaments, bridging the densest pockets of space. "While we've spotted filaments before, it's tricky to make out their properties," said lead researcher Konstantinos Migkas of Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands. "They're faint, making it difficult to isolate their light from that of any galaxies, black holes, and other objects lying nearby. "For the first time, our results closely match what we see in our leading model of the cosmos - something that's not happened before. It seems that the simulations were right all along." Clocking in at over 10 million degrees, the filament contains around 10 times the mass of the Milky Way and connects four galaxy clusters - two on one end, two on the other. All are part of the Shapley Supercluster, a collection of more than 8000 galaxies that forms one of the most massive structures in the nearby Universe. The filament stretches diagonally away from us through the supercluster for 23 million light-years, the equivalent of traversing the Milky Way end to end around 230 times. The astronomers used the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton and JAXA's Suzaku X-ray space telescopes to make the discovery. "Thanks to XMM-Newton we could identify and remove these cosmic contaminants, so we knew we were looking at the gas in the filament and nothing else," co-author Florian Pacaud of the University of Bonn, Germany, added. "Our approach was really successful, and reveals that the filament is exactly as we'd expect from our best large-scale simulations of the Universe." As well as unveiling a huge and previously unseen thread of matter running through the nearby cosmos, the finding shows how some of the densest and most extreme structures in the Universe - galaxy clusters - are connected over colossal distances. It also sheds light on the very nature of the 'cosmic web', the vast, invisible cobweb of filaments that underpins the structure of everything we see around us. "This research... reinforces our standard model of the cosmos and validates decades of simulations," Norbert Schartel, ESA XMM-Newton Project Scientist, added. "It seems that the 'missing' matter may truly be lurking in hard-to-see threads woven across the Universe." Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community! Get the latest news sent straight to your messages by joining our WhatsApp community today. You'll receive daily updates on breaking news as well as the top headlines across Scotland. No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Daily Record team. All you have to do is click here if you're on mobile, select 'Join Community' and you're in! If you're on a desktop, simply scan the QR code above with your phone and click 'Join Community'. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'exit group'.
Yahoo
19-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Astronomers Uncover a Massive Shaft of Missing Matter
Another clue about the whereabouts of the missing matter in the Universe has just emerged from amid the largest local cosmic structure. X-ray observations have revealed a massive filament of hot gas, measuring some 23 million light-years in length, in the space between four sub-clusters of galaxies in the enormous, 8,000-galaxy strong Shapley Supercluster. "For the first time, our results closely match what we see in our leading model of the cosmos – something that's not happened before," says astrophysicist Konstantinos Migkas of Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands. "It seems that the simulations were right all along." Most matter in the Universe comprises of a 'dark' variety we can't easily identify. Only around 15 percent of matter exists in the form of far more familiar protons, neutrons and electrons – what we might call 'normal matter'. We know more or less how much normal matter there was in the early Universe, just after the Big Bang, thanks to the Cosmic Microwave Background, the fossil radiation that propagated through space-time when the Universe became transparent. A huge problem arises when we compare that early Universe quantity of normal matter to the amount that's around now. All the stars, black holes, galaxies, planets, dust, gas, and everything else we can see only accounts for around half of what we'd expect to find. Matter can't be destroyed, so where the heck did it go? The best explanation we have is that it ended up in intergalactic space – vast amounts of material so tenuously distributed along the cosmic web that we can't directly see it. Increasing evidence of this faint reservoir has been emerging for the last few years; and the discovery of this filament is some of the best evidence yet. RELATED: Half The Universe's Matter Was Missing. Astronomers Just Found It. The cosmic web is a vast network of filaments of dark matter that span intergalactic space, connecting galaxies and acting as a "superhighway" along which galaxies and matter are funneled. We can't see these filaments easily, but Migkas and his team identified one by comparing observations from two X-ray telescopes. The now-retired Suzaku X-ray telescope was excellent for observing faint X-radiation that is spread over a large surface area, while XMM-Newton can pick out point sources of very bright X-rays. The researchers used existing images taken by the former to detect the glow of gas within the filament, while observations from the latter allowed them to remove contaminating X-rays from sources such as black holes. The resulting structure is a beast, stretching between two pairs of galaxy clusters named A3528S/N and A3530/32. Along its 23 million-light-year length, it contains enough material to fill 10 Milky Way galaxies, blazing at a temperature of more than 10 million degrees Celsius. It is, the researchers say, exactly what such a filament is expected to be, based on simulations of the Universe. "This research is a great example of collaboration between telescopes, and creates a new benchmark for how to spot the light coming from the faint filaments of the cosmic web," says astronomer and XMM-Newton project scientist Norbert Schartel of the European Space Agency. "More fundamentally, it reinforces our standard model of the cosmos and validates decades of simulations: it seems that the 'missing' matter may truly be lurking in hard-to-see threads woven across the Universe." The research has been published in Astronomy & Astrophysics. Our Galaxy's Monster Black Hole Is Spinning Almost as Fast as Physics Allows Did a Passing Star Cause Earth to Warm 56 Million Years Ago? A Game-Changing Telescope Is About to Drop First Pics. Here's How to Watch.
