Huge mysterious gas streak is developing in the universe

Astronomers have discovered a huge, very bright gas trail drifting freely in the distant universe, and they have not found the reason why it has become so bright.

This glowing dust gas lies at the center of a large group of galaxies, one of the first galaxies to be formed in the universe, 10 billion light-years away.

The bright streak is one of the first of these we discovered, so we still don't have much information about it.

The celestial body is called the giant Lyman-alpha Nebula (or ELAN), which is not only the brightest of this type of celestial body, but also one of the brightest celestial objects in the universe. Its brightness is similar to the Slug Nebula, a nebula extending 2 million light-years across galaxies.

"It is extremely bright, and it may be bigger than the Slug nebula, but we still haven't seen much about it, except for the dim light. It is a strange phenomenon, when it can glow. in an energetic way without a clear light source, "said J. Xavier Prochaska, a member of the research team from the University of California.

Only a few ELANs have been discovered so far, the dust inside it is thought to have a close connection with nearby galaxies, forming a giant network in the universe.

ELANs are probably the source of energy for high-radiation phenomena in the universe, such as quasars, new stars or supernova explosions. However, we have yet to find such an event, in addition to the recently discovered MAMMOTH-1 nebula .

What we know is that the light emitted from it has the same wavelength as the light absorbed and emitted by hydrogen molecules when cooled - known as Lyman-alpha radiation - but they are We still don't know how to make them hotter.

Scientists predict that supermassive black holes swallow matter in the galaxy and form huge ELAN.

A mysterious cloud of gas, very large and very bright, has just been found in the universe.(Photo: Astrophysical Journal).

The MAMMOTH-1 Nebula was found by a survey called Project Mapping Super-giants created by hydrogen gas (Mapping the Most Massive Overdensities Through Hydrogen - MAMMOTH). This project also seeks out Slug nebulae since 2014.

Very large groups of young galaxies, which contain unusually high-density galaxies in an area of ​​only 50 million light-years, are all bound together by gravity.

The observations of these galaxies show that they have grown tremendously, since the most modern telescopes of humans have been observed only 3 billion years after the Big Bang took place.

A number of hypotheses have been proposed to explain why the MAMMOTH-1 nebula is at the center of the giant young galaxies groups that become very bright, these dust clouds are highly capable of moving around a celestial core. The galaxy is active, releasing large amounts of radiation.

These galactic cores are called AGNs. They are a small area at the center of the galaxy, which has a higher brightness than regular galactic cores. The team explained that AGNs are powered by a supermassive black hole that always consumes everything in the center of the galaxy, making them extremely bright.

The radiation emitted by AGNs is very high, ionized by hydrogen in the space around it, and this may suggest the formation of ELANs, related to super-bright Lyman-alpha radiation. .

Quasars, or quasars, are the brightest celestial bodies in the universe. They are thought to have the brightest AGNs seen. The MAMMOTH-1 Nebula may be brighter, but since we still don't know what it is associated with, we have not been able to confirm it.

"We could not find anything through the visible wavelength of light (the naked eye could see), because there was a lot of gas dust in front of us that shielded our vision. We will continue to observe them through. Different wavelengths, " said Prochaska.

The team also found individual quasars that drifted in the universe at a distance of 10 billion light-years from Earth. And the ELAN is still a huge mystery in the universe for us.