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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A UNIVERSE WITHOUT A CENTER?

Image Credit: Eugenio Bianchi, Carlo Rovelli & Rocky Kolb. According to the standard theories of cosmology, there is no center of the universe. In a conventional explosion, material expand out from a central point and the instinct suggests that with the Big Bang happened something similar. But the Big Bang was not an explosion like that at all: it was an explosion of space, not an explosion in space . The Big Bang happened everywhere in the Universe.

UNIVERSE IS FINITE OR INFINITE?

Art by Moonrunner Design At present there is no answer to this question. However I will try to list the hypothesys currently on the table with related issues.

New research looks at how ‘cosmic web’ of filaments alters star formation in galaxies

Cosmic Web. Credit: NASA Astronomer Gregory Rudnick sees the universe crisscrossed by something like an interstellar superhighway system. Filaments — the strands of aggregated matter that stretch millions of light years across the universe to connect galaxy clusters — are the freeways. “Galaxies will flow along filaments from less dense parts of the universe to more dense parts of the universe, kind of like cars flowing down a highway to the big city. In this case, they are going toward big clusters, being pulled by the gravity of those large concentrations of matter,” he said. “I’m interested in how galaxies are affected by the regions in which they live,” Rudnick said. “Filaments are the first place where galaxies come into contact with higher density regions of the universe. If a galaxy in a ‘rural’ part of the universe enters a dense part, I want to know how its properties change — for example, does it change the number of stars it forms, or does its shape get altered? Us...

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