The ancestors of some of the largest clusters have not been seen in a long time. Andrew Newman's new work shows a new way to identify the earliest stages of the most extreme environments. Nature publishes the findings of the team.
All of us are shaped by our environment. It's important to trace the emergence of properties caused by environmental factors as they arise in order to get a complete picture of the various physical influences on a galaxy's lifecycle.
There's a lot we don't know about when and how the colors, mass, and shapes of the universe changed.
Some of the most massive structures in the universe are called a galaxy cluster. Protoclusters are some of the earliest structures in the universe and are perfect for studying the early stages of a universe.
The universe began as a soup of particles that were rapidly expanding. Some regions of the universe were denser than others and, over time, their gravity overcame the universe's expansion, causing the material to collapse inward, forming clumps of structure that would eventually give birth to groups or clusters of galaxies
Protoclusters can be hard to spot.
Most Protoclusters have been found by looking at the sky for regions with a lot of distant galaxies. A new strategy was put in place by the research team.
The key to their method is the fact that the hydrogen gas that's part of the protocluster will absorb light and cast a shadow on the other stars. The team was able to identify the likely locations of the clusters by using the telescopes at Las Campanas.
Newman said that they were surprised to find so few galaxies that cast the strongest shadows.
Their research shows that the overlooked protoclusters harbor unseen galaxies that must have evolved differently, making them dimmer and harder to detect. The team is going to conduct further searches to find the missing galaxies.
Blanc said that it was interesting that the evolutionary paths of the galaxies differed so early in the history of the universe.
As we map the distant universe it's important to bring together multiple perspectives; using just one technique can give a misleading picture.
Future searches will be able to test their findings against a larger population, according to the researchers.
More information: Andrew Newman, A population of ultraviolet-dim protoclusters detected in absorption, Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04681-6. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04681-6 Journal information: Nature
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