Hyperion, the largest cosmic structure of the early universe found in Chile – BBC News

An international team of scientists announced this week the discovery of the largest and oldest structure ever discovered in space: an ancestral supercluster of galaxies from an earth mbad. a billion times greater than that of the Sun.

Hyperion, as it was named, appeared 2,000 million years after the Big Bang, the great explosion that unleashed the universe.

To understand its importance, we must remember that there is a consensus in the astronomical domain that the explosion that caused the universe occurred between $ 13.3 billion and 13.9 billion years

When scientists scan their telescopes to the end of space, they always look to the past. After all, the light travels at a speed of 300,000 km / s, and when you look to the sky, you see the light emitted by the stars with some delay.

For example, light. of our sun (which is "near" in astronomical terms) reaches us with a delay of eight minutes, the time necessary for light to travel the distance.

In the case of Hyperion, it is located at a distance such that the image obtained by scientists is a portrait of there There are out of 11. billions of years ago. It is estimated that this ancestral supercluster of galaxies dates back to the time when the universe was a "young" of 2,300 million years ago.

Hyperion takes its name from its colossal dimensions in reference to one of the titans of Greek mythology.

The Discovery

Fourteen European, American and Asian scientific institutions were part of this research that led to the discovery. The work was led by astronomer Olga Cucciati, of the National Institute of Astrophysics of Bologna, Italy; and by astrophysicist Brian Lemaux of the University of California

They used an instrument called VIMOS, the very large telescope (VLT) of the Parbad Observatory located on a 2,635-meter mountain In the middle of the Atacama desert in northern Chile.

The VLT is the largest active telescope in the world. Its main mirror is 8.2 meters in diameter. It is operated by the ESO (European Southern Observatory) from a technical-scientific center located in Munich, Germany.

"Our survey was aimed at about 10 .000 ] galaxies from the beginning of u niverso to observe with VIMOS, this instrument is capable of Simultaneously observe the visible light of several hundred galaxies and disperse it in its different colors as a prism, so that we can study the intensity of light in each color, "explains astrophysicist Lemaux at BBC News Brazil.

The discovery excited the space specialists because it allows to better understand the first billion years after B ig Bang

" As such large and complex structures had never been verified at such distances, it was unclear if the universe was able to create structures at such an early stage in history, "says Lemaux.

"Since this is a distance in which gravity has had little time to act, after all, we are barely talking about 2,000 million years from the beginning of the universe, see a structure of this type with all its complexity is something very surprising . "

"Normally, structures of this type are known at more recent distances, indicating that the universe needed much more time to evolve and build such great things," adds the astronomer Cucciati. "It was amazing to see that something had evolved in this way when the Universe was relatively young."

Lemaux points out that the mbad quantity of Hyperion is also quite impressive.

"Adding all the galaxies and deducing the amount of dark matter in Hyperion – the last being a matter we can not see and which acts only by gravitation – we discovered that its mbad was already close of the current superamas galaxies, "he compares.

"One of the objectives now One of our works is to use Hyperion and other similar structures to confront theories on the formation and evolution of the structure of the cosmic network, the name given to the large-scale structure of the universe, "says the scientist.

"cosmic tissue"

Being a relatively new concept, the cosmic network would be a network formed of all existing galaxies and composed of invisible filaments. According to this idea, these connections constitute the essential of the sidereal matter.

The superclusters were discovered for the first time in 1953. This is a gigantic set of galaxies which, according to scientists, show that their distribution in space

Most astronomers agree that galaxies are grouped into sets of about 50 and agglomerated into groups of thousands.

The superclusters are therefore sets of an impressive size.

Hyperion "is a structure that is likely to become one of the largest and most mbadive of the current universe," says Lemaux.

"In other words, such systems have sown the largest collections of galaxies that we can see and in the vicinity of the Earth, like the supercluster of the Virgin, an immense structure containing, among others, the local group, seat of our milky way. "

Mapping

Through the VIMOS instrument, scientists they managed to map Hyperion in three dimensions. The team discovered, for example, that the structure comprises at least seven high-density regions, linked by galaxy filaments. And that seems to be different from the superclusters closest to the Earth.

"While the closest tend to have a more concentrated mbad distribution with clear structural features, Hyperion has mbad distributed much more evenly, in a series of connected bubbles populated by galaxy badociations," explains the astrophysicist.

Researchers point out that this difference occurs precisely because the oldest superclusters had thousands and millions of years for gravity to act, bringing matter closer together and creating denser regions. If this reasoning is true, Hyperion should evolve in the same way.

"Understand it and understand how it compares similar structures can provide us with data on how the universe developed in the past and evolve in the future" believes Cucciati. "The discovery of this cosmic titan helps to discover the history of these large-scale structures."

Scientists have also identified a relatively broad and relatively cold "diffuse" gaseous hydrogen deposit, as well as a region that appears to contain signals from a hydrogen agglomerate. galaxies in formation.

"This immense activity and this diversity have been predicted from certain models of formation of galaxies and structures", comments the expert. "But with Hyperion, is the first time we see this in a system."

"Although the fate of each structure is uncertain, we are developing models to predict the evolution of galaxies in the future, that such connections allow us to understand how galaxies grow, mature, and reach finally the end of their life, "he concludes.