News: Recently, University of Oxford researchers reported a cosmic filament about 50 million lightyears long that is traced by at least 14 galaxies.
About Cosmic Filament
- A cosmic filament is one of the largest thread-like structures in the universe’s cosmic web that links giant clusters of galaxies through long, thin strands.
- Formation
- A filament forms when sheets of matter intersect and collapse under gravity.
- It stretches into long strands that connect massive galaxy clusters.
- As gas and smaller galaxies flow along these strands, the falling material can also induce rotation in the filament and the galaxies within it.
- It act as pathways along which matter moves toward large clusters, shaping the cosmic web’s overall structure.
- Composition
- It contains gas, dark matter, and galaxies that are pulled together by gravity.
- These strands also surround large, empty regions of space called voids.
- Scale: A single cosmic filament spans hundreds of millions of lightyears, making it one of the largest known structures in the universe.
About Cosmic Web
- The cosmic web is a vast, interconnected network of galaxies, gas, and dark matter that forms filaments, walls, sheets, and huge empty voids.
- It stretches across billions of light-years and looks like a giant web or sponge on the largest scales of the universe.
- Gravity pulls matter into these long threads, where galaxies cluster at the intersections as clusters or superclusters and move along the filaments.
- Dark matter forms the invisible framework that controls how galaxies form and evolve across these immense distances.
- Key Components
- Filaments: Filaments are long, thread-like structures, hundreds of millions of light-years in length, that act as highways for galaxies and gas while linking galaxy clusters.
- Walls & Sheets: Walls and sheets are large, flattened structures formed where filaments intersect, and they contain superclusters of galaxies such as the Sloan Great Wall.
- Clusters & Superclusters: Clusters and superclusters are dense regions where several filaments meet, and they hold very large groupings of galaxies.
- Voids: Voids are huge, almost empty regions of space that lie between filaments and walls and mark the least dense parts of the universe.
