Unveiling the Mystery: The First Discovery of a ‘Bubble of Galaxies’ from the Early Universe

2023-09-08 12:35:38
The first discovery of a “bubble of galaxies” dating back to the first ages of the universe. Astronomers have observed for the first time a “bubble of galaxies,” which is a huge mass whose origins go back to the first ages of the universe, about 13.8 billion years ago, according to a study published in the journal Astrophysical Journal. Because it is not possible to see it with the naked eye, it is assumed that the bubble is a mass with a diameter of one billion light-years, that is, ten thousand times larger than the Milky Way Galaxy. Speaking to Agence France-Presse, French researcher Daniel Pomared, an astrophysicist at the Atomic Energy Commission and co-author of the study published this week, said that this mass is located in what astronomers call the near universe, that is, about 820 million light-years away. Of the Milky Way, it can be described as a “spherical shell with a core.” The heart of this shell consists of a very large group of galaxies surrounded by a large void, and around it are other very large groups of galaxies and galactic filaments, like the Great Wall of Sloan. Pommarid points out that the discovery of this “bubble of galaxies” represents “part of a very long scientific process,” because it confirms a phenomenon that was mentioned in 1970 by the American cosmologist and Nobel Prize winner in physics, Jim Peebles. The scientist confirms that the processes taking place in the primitive universe, which consisted of a plasma of particles and light, produce sound waves. These frequencies will create bubbles within the plasma containing matter at their centre. The process stopped 380,000 years after the Big Bang, which led to the shape of these bubbles “freezing.” Then it grew as the universe expanded, like a large number of “fossils” dating back to the earliest times. In 2005, this phenomenon, called baryonic acoustic oscillation (BAO), provided indirect evidence of its existence through statistical analyzes of galaxy data. This remained until the discovery of the new bubble, which was named Ho’oleilana, a Native Hawaiian word meaning “whispers of awakening.” The main author of the study, the American astrophysicist from the Honolulu Institute of Astronomy, Richard Brent Tully, is the one who gave this name to the newly discovered bubble. He and Daniel Bomaredi are credited with the discovery in 2014 of the Laniakea supercluster, which means “the big sky” in the language of the indigenous Hawaiians, which alone contains about 100,000 galaxies, including the Milky Way. Ho Olelana was discovered serendipitously, as part of Richard Brent Tully’s work on new galaxy data. Pommarid says that it was an “unexpected” discovery, and he asked to draw maps of this region of the sky, which he describes as “the unknown issue” for them. The two researchers then contacted a young Australian cosmologist, Colan Howlett, from the University of Brisbane. This third co-author of the study determined, “from a mathematical standpoint, the spherical structure that best matches the data provided.” All this work has made it possible to develop a three-dimensional visualization of the shape of Ho Olelana and the location of the archipelagos of galaxies that make it up. Pommarid says that this research work contributes to a major topic in cosmology, which is the value of the Hubble constant, which allows calculating the expansion rate of the universe whose galaxies continue to move away from each other, and a bubble in it such as “Ho Ollana” continues to inflate. But the Hubble constant is subject to different values ​​depending on whether it is measured in the near or distant universe. In this case, Ho Olilana’s own research work confirms the first possibility. The adventure of discovering other bubbles has begun, with instruments such as the European Euclid Space Telescope, which was launched in July and will contribute to understanding the expansion of the universe, or with the large radio telescope, SKA, which is being built in South Africa “to observe the universe from the southern side of the Trail Galaxy.” Al-Tabbaneh,” according to Pommarid. (AFP)
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