Primordial Filaments from Big Bang Hiding Half the Missing Matter of the Universe in galaxy cluster Abell 3391/95.

[Hartmann352]

“Found” –Primordial Filaments from Big Bang Hiding Half the Missing Matter of the Universe
Posted on Dec 17, 2020 in Big Bang, Science

A gas filament with a length of 50 million light years –unfathomably large thread-like structures of hot gas that surround and connect galaxies and galaxy clusters–has been observed by astronomers at the University of Bonn for the first time. Its structure is uncannily similar to the predictions of recent computer simulations.

“A Tiny Aberration”

We owe our existence to a tiny aberration, reports the University of Bonn. Over the course of 13 billion years, since the Big Bang, “a kind of sponge structure developed: large ‘holes. without any matter, with areas in between where thousands of galaxies are gathered in a small space, so-called galaxy clusters, that should still be connected by remnant filaments of the primordial gas, like the gossamer-thin threads of a spider web.

“According to calculations, more than half of all baryonic matter in our universe is contained in these filaments—this is the form of matter of which stars and planets are composed, as are we ourselves,” explains Dr. Thomas Reiprich from the Argelander Institute for Astronomy at the University of Bonn. Yet it has so far escaped our gaze: Due to the enormous expansion of the filaments, the matter in them is extremely diluted: It contains just ten particles per cubic meter, which is much less than the best vacuum we can create on Earth.”

Gargantuan Filaments Fueled the Universe We See Today

In contrast to earlier belief that galaxies formed and then organized into clusters, in a bottom-up way, it is now generally believed that gargantuan filaments in the universe fueled the formation of clusters of galaxies and galaxies at places where the filaments crossed, creating dense regions of matter.

The 2019 research from the RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research and the University of Tokyo –used observations from the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) at the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile and the Suprime-Cam at the Subaru telescope to make detailed observations of the filaments of gas connecting galaxies in a large, distant proto-cluster in the early Universe.–suggests that gas falling along massive filaments under the force of gravity in the early universe triggered the formation of star bursting galaxies and supermassive black holes, giving the universe the structure that we see today.

Enter eRosita

With a new instrument, the eROSITA space telescope, Reiprich and his colleagues were able to make the gas fully visible for the first time. “eROSITA has very sensitive detectors for the type of X-ray radiation that emanates from the gas in filaments,” explains Reiprich about galaxy cluster Abell 3391/95 –a system of three galaxy clusters, which is about 700 million light years distant. The eROSITA images show not only the clusters and numerous individual galaxies, but also the gas filaments connecting these structures. The entire filament is 50 million light years long. But it may be even more enormous: The scientists assume that the images only show a section. “It also has a large field of view—like a wide-angle lens, it captures a relatively large part of the sky in a single measurement, and at a very high resolution.” This allows detailed images of such huge objects as filaments to be taken in a comparatively short time.


In this view of the eROSITA image (right; left again a simulation for comparison) the very faint areas of thin gas are also visible. Credit: left: Reiprich et al., Space Science Reviews, 177, 195; right: Reiprich et al., Astronomy & Astrophysics


Confirmation of the Standard Model

“We compared our observations with the results of a simulation that reconstructs the evolution of the universe,” explains Reiprich. “The eROSITA images are strikingly similar to computer-generated graphics. This suggests that the widely accepted standard model for the evolution of the universe is correct.” Most importantly, the data show that the missing matter is probably actually hidden in the filaments.

Source: T.H. Reiprich et al. The Abell 3391/95 galaxy cluster system. A 15 Mpc intergalactic medium emission filament, a warm gas bridge, infalling matter clumps, and (re-) accelerated plasma discovered by combining SRG/eROSITA data with ASKAP/EMU and DECam data, Astronomy & Astrophysics (2020). DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202039590
The Daily Galaxy, Max Goldberg, via University of Bonn

Should you care to read the full submission to Astronomy & Astrophysics manuscript no. 39590corr_TR ⃝c ESO 2020, see :

The Abell 3391/95 galaxy cluster system, December 4, 2020

A 15 Mpc intergalactic medium emission filament, a warm gas bridge, infalling matter clumps, and (re-) accelerated plasma discovered by combining SRG/eROSITA data with ASKAP/EMU and DECam data

T.H. Reiprich1, A. Veronica1, F. Pacaud1, M.E. Ramos-Ceja2, N. Ota1, 18, J. Sanders2, M. Kara1, T. Erben1, M. Klein3, J. Erler1, 19, J. Kerp1, D.N. Hoang4, M. Brüggen4, J. Marvil5, L. Rudnick15, V. Biffi3, K. Dolag3, J. Aschersleben1, K. Basu1, H. Brunner2, E. Bulbul2, K. Dennerl2, D. Eckert6, M. Freyberg2, E. Gatuzz2, V. Ghirardini2, F. Käfer2, A. Merloni2, K. Migkas1, K. Nandra2, P. Predehl2, J. Robrade4, M. Salvato2, B. Whelan1, A. Diaz-Ocampo7, D. Hernandez-Lang3, A. Zenteno8, M.J.I. Brown9, J.D. Collier10, 13, 16, J.M. Diego11, A.M. Hopkins12, A. Kapinska5, B. Koribalski10, 13, T. Mroczkowski14, R.P. Norris10, 13, A. O’Brien13, and E. Vardoulaki17
(Affiliations can be found after the references)

https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/pdf/forth/aa39590-20.pdf

Hartmann352

 

[Hayseed]

Looking at clouds. That's even worse than looking at clouds. When we look at clouds, the clouds are there at the same time. And we can see whatever we want to see.

Now, put a time filter on those star images. You will see that the objects in those images are NOT there at the same time. They can not affect or effect one another.

Another example of modern intellect. A star field image is an illusion. A multiple time exposure. It's like an image of a ball game, super imposed on all the other images of past ball games.

Only a time filter can expose one ball game.

 

[Hartmann352]

Looking at clouds. That's even worse than looking at clouds. When we look at clouds, the clouds are there at the same time. And we can see whatever we want to see.

Now, put a time filter on those star images. You will see that the objects in those images are NOT there at the same time. They can not affect or effect one another.

Another example of modern intellect. A star field image is an illusion. A multiple time exposure. It's like an image of a ball game, super imposed on all the other images of past ball games.

Only a time filter can expose one ball game.

It's not quite as simplistic with clouds. Recall that the image of the clouds, just like the images of Abell 3391/95, are transmitted by the speed of light. The light speed of the photons we receive from the cirrus or cumulo-nimbus clouds above us still dictate that the images we receive were ever so slightly in the past. Then imagine these same clouds viewed from the International Space Station and every image you see, between blinks of your eye, lie a tiny bit farther in the past due to light travel time.

This is what has fascinated me since my childhood: looking up in the night sky, examining galaxies through a telescope or viewing the Hubble Deep Field images, gives you a time machine into our universe as it was at particular epochs.

You state: "It's like an image of a ball game, super imposed on all the other images of past ball games."

I would phrase it a bit differently. These ideas become clearer when you consider that our picture of the Moon is simply what the Moon was like 1¼ seconds ago (the time it takes the Moon's reflected light to reach the Earth from the Moon), our picture of the Sun is actually how it looked 8½ minutes ago, and by the time we see an image of Alpha Centauri, our nearest star system, it is already 4.3 years out of date. We can therefore never know what the universe is like at this very instant. The universe is clearly not a thing that extends in space, but also in space-time.

In Einstein’s curved space-time, a direct extension of Riemann’s notion of curved space* (1854), a particle follows a world line, or geodesic, somewhat analogous to the way a billiard ball on a warped surface would follow a path determined by the warping or curving of the surface its rolling on. The paths of light rays are a special type of space-time geodesics, called “null geodesics.” Our lives also follow world lines across our planet, as our planet circles the sun, as our solar system circles the Milky Way, while the Milky Way hurtles toward the Andromeda Galaxy, and on and on.

* One of the basic topics in Riemannian Geometry is the study of curved surfaces.

Riemannian Geometers** also study higher dimensional spaces. The universe can be described as a three dimensional space. Near the earth, the universe looks roughly like three dimensional Euclidean space. However, near very heavy stars and black holes, the space-time is curved and bent. There are pairs of points in the universe which have more than one minimal geodesic between them. The Hubble Telescope has discovered points which have more than one minimal geodesic between them and the point where the telescope is located. This is called gravitational lensing. The amount that space is curved can be estimated by using theorems from Riemannian Geometry and measurements taken by astronomers. Physicists believe that the curvature of space is related to the gravitational field of a star according to a partial differential equation called Einstein's Equation***. So using the results from the theorems in Riemannian Geometry they can estimate the mass of the star or black hole which causes the gravitational lensing.

Like most mathematicians, Riemannian Geometers look for theorems even when there are no practical applications. The theorems that can be used to study gravitational lensing are much older than Einstein's Equation and the Hubble telescope. We expect that practical applications of these theorems will be discovered some day in the future. Without having mathematical theorems sitting around for them to apply, physicists would have trouble discovering new theories and describing them. Einstein, for example, studied Riemannian Geometry**** before he developed his important theories. His equation involves a special curvature called Ricci***** curvature, which was defined first by mathematicians and was very useful for his work. Ricci curvature is a kind of average curvature used in dimensions 3 and up. In Linear Algebra you are taught how to take the trace of a matrix. Ricci curvature is a trace of a matrix made out of sectional curvatures.

One kind of theorem Riemannian Geometers are looking for today is a relationship between the curvature of a space and its shape. For example, there are many different shapes that surfaces can take. They can be cylinders, or spheres or paraboloids or tori, to name a few. A torus is the surface of a bagel and it has a hole in it. You could also stick together two bagels and get a surface with two holes. How many holes can you get? Certainly, as many as you want. If you string together infinitely many bagels then you will get a surface with infinitely many holes in it. Now suppose you make a rule about how the surface is allowed to bend. If a surface must always bend in a rounded way (like a sphere) at every point, then we say it has positive curvature. A paraboloid has positive curvature and so does a sphere. A cylinder doesn't and neither does a torus (look inside the hole to see it bends more like a saddle). There is a theorem which says that if a surface has positive curvature then it cannot have any holes.

** A geometer is a mathematician whose area of study is geometry.

*** Einstein equations see: http://www.spacetime-model.com/files/efe.pdf

**** See: http://www.maths.lth.se/matematiklu/personal/sigma/Riemann.pdf; especially Chapter 5.

***** The Ricci curvature tensor, also simply known as the Ricci tensor (Parker and Christensen 1994), is defined by:

where

is the Riemann tensor.

Geometrically, the Ricci curvature is the mathematical object that controls the growth rate of the volume of metric balls in a manifold.

From viewing the simplest of items, clouds, overhead, to distant galaxies like Abell 3391, we find that the photons of light bringing us the information and views of these bodies in visible light, just like the many forms of energy found along the electromagnetic spectrum, travel along world lines from their source to our eyes. The time of travel, or their recessional velocity if they are distant galaxies, determine their distance from us in space-time and their location back in time.

Hear and enjoy: "Time" by the Polo-Seco Singers

Hartmann352

 

[O'Connor]

According to calculations, more than half of all baryonic matter in our universe is contained in these filaments -- this is the form of matter of which stars and planets are composed, as are we ourselves," explains Prof. Dr. Thomas Reiprich from the Argelander Institute for Astronomy at the University of Bonn.

 

[Hartmann352]

According to calculations, more than half of all baryonic matter in our universe is contained in these filaments -- this is the form of matter of which stars and planets are composed, as are we ourselves," explains Prof. Dr. Thomas Reiprich from the Argelander Institute for Astronomy at the University of Bonn.

What I find most amazing is that due to the enormous expansion of the filaments, with the matter in them being extremely diluted and containing just ten particles per cubic meter, it is much less than the best vacuum we can create on Earth. And yet, due to their gigantic size and age, the small amount of matter found in these filaments, nearly negligible by earthly standards, amounts to half of the baryonic matter in the universe.


dark-matter-filaments-subaru-michigan

We certainly exist in the perfect epoch to explore the universe across all the wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum with amazing results which, quite often, match scientific simulations.

Hartmann352