Thanks to technology and the advancement of science with respect to the universe, it has helped us to change the perception of the human being. From thinking that we are the center of the universe to discovering that everything is connected with a cosmic web of the galaxies spread throughout the universe. And it is that the cosmic network that is responsible for the origin of all galaxies and serves as a connection between them.
In this article we are going to tell you what the cosmic web is, what its characteristics are and how it connects all the galaxies in the universe.
What is the cosmic web
The cosmic web is a spider web-like structure that basically connects the entire universe. It began to form shortly after the Big Bang, and from it the first galaxies formed.
The cosmic web consists of filaments of hydrogen and dark matter. This network connects all the elements of the universe through these same filaments. ANDIt is at the point where the filaments intersect that galaxies are created.
This is a somewhat complicated concept to imagine. To be able to graph this, one has to think in a general framework, and this is what cosmologists study, the dynamics of the universe. The organization of this structure seems to follow a hierarchical model, down to the scale of superclusters and filaments. It is the largest structure from which we can understand the universe.
Ultimately, If we had to think of a map of the universe, it would be the cosmic web.. In the image below, you can get an idea of what the parent structure from which the first galaxies formed was like. This is the best view yet of the large-scale structure of our universe.
As you can see?
This is a team of scientists from around the world using two fundamental technologies: the Long-Range Telescope (VLT) and the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Multiple Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE).
With these two tools, the scientists managed to see the light of the gas that forms the filaments of the cosmic network. They had to look at a region of the sky that was deeper than before.
They managed to capture the deepest image ever captured. Before that, the record was held by Hubble, the so-called Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF). This is an image emitted about 13 billion years ago, just 800 million years after the Big Bang.
New images now obtained show the light of the gas emitted by the filaments of the structure, that is, we are seeing a group of galaxies forming in the past. It is as if we discovered a child's portrait of the universe a thousand years before its birth.
The universe is now about 13.800 billion years old. That is, the light of this network of universes is the past of the universe, and it is the birth of the entire galaxy.
Cosmic web and gravity
For years, cosmologists have been developing computer simulations of the structure of the universe to create a "standard model of cosmology." For it, used cosmic microwave radiation, or radiation from the cosmic background, as a starting point. corresponding to the observations of the early visible universe collected by instruments such as the Planck Space Observatory.
His calculations showed that as the universe grew and formed, matter was pulled together by gravity into filaments and nodes, like a giant cosmic web. The new results from the 10-m Keck Telescope in Hawaii are the result of a joint effort by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. They constitute the first direct observations of the cold gas that adorns such cosmic webs.
The network proposed by the Standard Model is composed mainly of mysterious "dark matter." Although invisible by itself, this elusive substance exerts a gravitational pull on visible light and nearby ordinary matter.
Huge clumps of dark matter bend light passing near them through a process called gravitational lensing, which has previously made it possible to measure their distribution. But very distant dark matter is hard to see this way, and ordinary cold matter is hard to detect.
In these new observations, glowing hydrogen illuminated by the distant quasar outlines a hidden filament of dark matter that is pulled toward it by gravity. This is how the filaments of which the cosmic web is composed are detected.
Dark matter is expected to dominate mass and form these structures, and then ordinary matter, gas, stars, and everything else, will shape the filaments and structures defined by dark matter dynamics. The scientists detected the filaments earlier thanks to the use of gravitational lensing that allows them to see the distribution of dark matter.
How is it formed?
Galaxies are not randomly scattered, but rather tend to clump into larger structures due to the influence of gravity. On a very large scale, these aggregations take the form of filaments that intersect at nodes, thus creating the cosmic web.
The cosmic web is formed thanks to the influence of dark matter and dark energy, which we have already seen are two essential components of the universe, although for the most part they cannot be directly observed. Dark matter, which neither emits nor reflects light, exerts a significant gravitational force, acting as "scaffolding" to guide the distribution of visible matter, such as stars and galaxies.
The filaments of the cosmic web they are streams of dark matter and gas, where normal matter clumps around due to gravity. In these regions, galaxies find the ideal conditions to form and evolve. The nodes of the cosmic web are points of intersection of multiple filaments, and it is at these nodes that a large amount of matter is concentrated, forming massive clusters of galaxies.
This network-like structure is crucial to understanding how the universe is organized on a large scale and how its different components interact. The cosmic web acts as a kind of skeleton that connects all the galaxies, providing gravitational communication pathways along their filaments.
I hope that with this information you can learn more about what the cosmic web is and how all the galaxies are connected.