A SIGNIFICATIVE FRACTION OF BARYONS RESIDE IN THE FILAMENTS OF THE COSMIC WEB

(Credit: NASA, ESA, and E. Hallman (University of Colorado, Boulder)

Observations of the cosmic microwave background indicate that baryons (protons, neutrons, etc., - the ordinary matter just to understand) occupies only 5% of the total energy content of the Universe (95% is dark matter and dark energy). However in the local universe approximately half of this "ordinary" matter it has never been observed.

A group of astrophysicists
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to know more:
(http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.00454)
(http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v528/n7580/full/nature16058.html)
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has experimentally verified that the missing mass (ordinary) does not fill the space homogeneously but it is concentrated in large-scale filamentary structures that make up the so-called cosmic web with temperatures between 10^5 to 10^7 degrees. This gas has been heated up by the cluster's gravitational pull and is now feeding its core. The filamentous structures intersect at the nodes creating a structure that visually recalls the network of neurons of the nervous system.

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Fermi Bubbles

Image: A giant gamma-ray structure was discovered in 2010 by processing Fermi all-sky data at energies from 1 to 10 billion electron volts, shown here. The dumbbell-shaped feature (center) emerges from the galactic center and extends 50 degrees north and south from the plane of the Milky Way, spanning the sky from the constellation Virgo to the constellation Grus. Credits: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT/D. Finkbeiner et al. At a time when our earliest human ancestors mastered walking upright the heart of our Milky Way galaxy underwent a titanic eruption, driving gases and other material outward at 2 million miles per hour.

CONTAMINATION BY SUPERNOVAE IN GLOBULAR CLUSTERS

Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Alexandra Angelich (NRAO/AUI/NSF) Only a small amount of the supernovae products remains trapped within globular clusters and this "catch" only occurs in the most massive cases (mass cluster ≥ 10^6 solar masses).

SUPER-EDDINGTON ACCRETION IN ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI

Supermassive black holes at the cores of galaxies blast radiation and ultra-fast winds outward, as illustrated in this artist's conception. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Broad emission lines are a hallmark feature of type 1 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and quasars. Many basic properties of the broad-line region (BLR), such as its basic geometry, dynamics, and physical connection to the accretion disk around the supermassive black hole (BH), remain illdefined. AGN spectra exhibit both tremendous diversity as well as discernable patterns of systematic regularity.

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