As our telescopes ameliorate , we can look further back into our world ’s past to find out where the galaxies we see today came from . Sometimes , though , we find something that does n’t really match with our theories . Today is one of those time .
An external team of researchers has declare the discovery of a gigantic hydrogen nebula turn up 10 billion light - years out . This seems to be an enormous Lyman - alpha nebula ( ELAN ) , a rare group of gigantic accelerator cloud that shine thanks to the enormous push of quasars . But this one , called MAMMOTH-1 , does n’t appear to have a quasar inside .
The study , which was accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal and is availableonline , is part of theMApping the Most Massive Overdensities Through Hydrogen(MAMMOTH – hence the object name ) . The same squad previously discovered another ELAN call the “ Slug Nebula ” , which unlike MAMMOTH-1 hosts a quasi-stellar radio source .
" It ’s exceedingly vivid , and it ’s probably larger than the Slug Nebula , but there ’s nothing else visible except the faint-hearted smear of a galaxy . So it ’s a terrifically energetic phenomenon without an obvious power source , " senior writer J. Xavier Prochaska , a prof from UC Santa Cruz , said in astatement . “ I expect there ’s a quasar that is so obscure by dust that most of its light is cover . "
According to the standard cosmological model , galaxies are distributed in filaments made of non-white topic . This structure , known as the cosmic web , formed rapidly after the Big Bang around 13.8 billion years ago .
" From the distribution of galaxies we can deduce where the filaments of the cosmic World Wide Web are , and the nebula is perfectly aligned with that construction , " lead author Zheng Cai , also from UC Santa Cruz , added .
MAMMOTH-1 not only looks like a junction in the local cosmic web , but it appear to be a major one . It has an unco gamey concentration of protogalaxies in an area just 50 million swooning - years across . If we could observe it today , it would be an fabulously packed Galax urceolata clustering only 1 million light - yr across .
MAMMOTH-1 is a nice tease of what we are yet to discover . When observatories like the James Webb Space Telescope come online , they will look further back into the world , and these now singular physical object will belike be part of common sights from the dawn of metre .
Surface luminance function of MAMMOTH-1 Cai et al . , Astrophysical Journal
