5/27/2023 0 Comments What is astronomy![]() ![]() ![]() The supermassive black holes that back-light the gas stream can reach temperatures into the trillions of Kelvin. ![]() While galaxies contain plenty of things that can give off enough energy to be detected from Earth, a gas stream like this one is not only diffuse and relatively narrow, but extremely cold. While simulations have long predicted that cold streams like this one must exist, actually catching sight of one is much more difficult. That’s the results found in paper published this week in Science, which resulted from an unusual use of a radio telescope. Now, for the first time, astronomers have observed the cold, steady streams of gas that make up the raw material for stars.ĭespite the name, the filamentary stream surrounding and heading into the galaxy 4C 41.17- more than 10 billion light years away - is immense: a thin stream of cold carbon gas 100 kiloparsecs, or half a million light years, wide, and as massive as 140 billion suns. Astronomers have been looking for the source of the matter that makes up early galaxies for decades. ![]()
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