Exploring the Living Universe

Hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, flows through the Cosmic Web like lifeblood, nurturing galaxies and fueling the cosmic dance of creation. Dark Energy, the mysterious force driving the universe's expansion, pulses through the Cosmic Web, shaping its very structure. This gassy, intergalactic network is known in cosmological models as the cosmic web. Made of long filaments of hydrogen left over from the 'big bang' (a useful term referring to the initial 'inflation' phase), the web is thought to contain most (more than 60%) of the gas in the universe and to directly feed all of the star-producing regions in space.

The filaments of the galactic web have never been directly observed until recently, because they are among the faintest structures in the universe and are easily overshadowed by the glow of the galaxies around them.  Like an ethereal cosmic spider web, filaments of gas form a complex, interconnected structure that links galaxies to one another. But, just as whisper-thin threads of spider silk can be nearly invisible, this cosmic web is faint and difficult to detect. Now astronomers have made the first detailed picture of light emitted by the gas. The newly revealed filaments extend for millions of light-years, researchers report in the Oct. 4 Science. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-image-reveals-structure-cosmic-web.

​There is no doubt now that our Universe is interconnected and active. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fiCgMV0GiI

​The shape of galaxies and how they evolve depend on a web of cosmological filaments that run across the Universe. According to a recent study headed by EPFL’s Laboratory of Astrophysics, this cosmic web plays a much bigger role than previously thought. Across the Universe, galaxies are distributed along what’s called the cosmic web, a complex network of filaments made up of ordinary and dark matter. And where those filaments intersect, galaxy clusters - collections of hundreds or even thousands of galaxies bound to each other by the force of gravity - tend to form. 

 https://www.myscience.ch/news/2022/cosmic_web_orchestrates_the_progression_of_galaxies-2022-epfl

​The observations revealed two parallel highways of hydrogen connecting the galactic dots over millions of light-years, bridged by a third stream of gas connecting them diagonally like a cosmic off-ramp. True to cosmological models, the filaments of gas seemed to directly feed the most active star-forming galaxies on the grid, pumping hydrogen right into the homes of newborn suns and hungry black holes.  Gently lit by the ultraviolet glow of the galaxies themselves, the filaments stretch on for more than 3 million light-years, confirming their status as some of the most gargantuan structures in space.

The Dark Matter Filaments of our Universe

The behavior of one of nature's humblest creatures is helping astronomers probe the largest structures in the universe.

The single-cell organism, known as slime mold (Physarum polycephalum), builds complex filamentary networks in search of food, finding near-optimal pathways to connect different locations. In shaping the universe, gravity builds a vast cobweb structure of filaments tying galaxies and clusters of galaxies together along faint bridges hundreds of millions of light-years long. There is an uncanny resemblance between the two networks: one crafted by biological evolution, and the other by the primordial force of gravity.

Mapping the Dark Matter Filaments

Researchers turned to slime mold, a single-cell organism found on Earth, to help them build a map of the filaments in the local universe (within 500 million light-years from Earth) and find the gas within them. The researchers designed a computer algorithm inspired by the organism's behavior and applied it to data containing the positions of 37,000 galaxies ("food" for the slime mold) mapped by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The algorithm produced a three-dimensional map of the underlying cosmic web's intricate filamentary network, the purple structure in the image.

Dark Matter Filament Simulation Map:

Read the full article below:

​https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/slime-mold-simulations-used-to-map-dark-matter-holding-universe-together

The next section Gravity describes our local Galaxy Cluster which would have been formed by a branch of this filament growth. This clearly shows how gravity fields are linked across our Universe. All formed by these Dark Matter filaments.

How Was Our MILKY WAY Galaxy Formed?

The Next Generation (TNG) 'Illustris' simulations of how galaxies like ours were formed from web filaments of dark matter that weave their way through vast cosmic voids.

Illustris TNG is an ongoing series of large-scale computer simulations. The goal is to understand the mechanisms behind galaxy formation and evolution. The effort is a “series of large, cosmological magnetohydrodynamical simulations,” according to the Illustris TNG website. So far, the project has produced three primary runs, each one larger and higher resolution than the previous one: TNG 50, TNG 100, and TNG 300. Each run also focuses on various aspects of galaxy formation. TNG 300 is the largest, simulating a region of almost 300 million megaparsecs, over a billion light-years across, and containing millions of galaxies.  Illustris TNG simulates the large-scale structure of the Universe. It shows how galaxies are arranged on filaments of dark matter that weave their way through vast cosmic voids. Some of the features it shows are cosmological walls, also called galaxy walls. They’re enormous features, and one of them—a wall called the Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall—is the largest known structure in the Universe and is 10 billion light-years long.

The diagram in the website below shows a lonely Milky Way analogue galaxy, too massive for its wall. The background image shows the distribution of dark matter (green and blue) and galaxies (here seen as tiny yellow dots) in a thin slice of the cubic volume in which we expect to find one of such rare massive galaxies. https://www.universetoday.com/159754/according-to-simulations-the-milky-way-is-one-in-a-million/?fbclid=IwAR0o5fmCPb4D_bhF892l6wTdvsPSN0jpinzkHs0sPmP8_-al1YND0RAmocQ#more-15975

Magnetic Fields

​Magnetic fields have been spotted between two galaxy clusters Abell 0399 and Abell 0401.

Researchers examined the 10-million light-year gap between Abell 0399 and Abel 0401 using the Low-Frequency Array radio telescope network, or LOFAR, based mainly in the Netherlands. Observations of the space between these galaxy clusters uncovered a faint band of radiation called synchrotron emission — a kind of illumination produced by high-speed electrons spiraling around magnetic field lines...

​Another lingering question is whether other filaments in the cosmic web are also threaded with magnetic fields. “This is a filament that’s kind of modest, in terms of its size,” Aghanim says. She’s curious whether magnetic fields could go the distance between cosmic filaments tens of millions of light-years long.

​(Our whole universe is connected by gravitational fields which would attract magnetic fields between galaxies and clusters of galaxies. New types of detection like LOFAR will greatly improve our understanding of our universe.)

​

How Rotating Filaments Create a Rotating Galaxy

Cosmic Filaments​ pulls Galaxy Material and Dark Matter into a Rotating Strand of Cosmic Web