Astronomers have detected enormous shockwaves rattling the cosmic web that connects all galaxies in the universe, offering vital clues on how the largest structures in space were shaped.
For the first time, astronomers have spotted enormous, galaxy-scale shock waves rattling the"cosmic web" that connects nearly all known galaxies. These cosmic waves could reveal clues about how the largest objects in the universe were sculpted.
The cosmic web is a gigantic network of crisscrossing celestial superhighways paved with hydrogen gas and dark matter. Galaxies tend to form where multiple strands of the web intersect, often in clusters numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Now a new study, published Feb. 15 in the journal Science , could provide vital clues into the nature of the mysterious magnetic fields that stretch beside these tendrils.
Far from being completely frozen in place, the cosmic web's matter can sometimes violently collide. When matter in the web merges, enormous shock waves send charged particles ricocheting through the web's magnetic fields, causing the particles to emit a faint radio wave glow. These shock waves have been spotted around some of the universe's largest galaxy clusters, but until now they were never observed around the web itself.
Then, by looking only for polarized radio waves — whose rays vibrate at the same angle as each other and were predicted in simulations to be emitted by the shock waves — the researchers found the signal.
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