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 discovery was made by stitching and stacking thousands of radio telescope images together, which revealed the soft “radio glow” produced by shock waves from colliding matter in our universe’s biggest structures.
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.
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