First Intergalactic Bubble Discovered by Astrophysicists
Astrophysicists have discovered the earliest indications of certain portions of the universe that were heated to temperatures similar to that of the intergalactic gas medium, where the majority of atoms in the universe currently reside. The team identified the furthest patch of the universe heated up to temperatures more characteristic of today’s Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium (WHIM) at a time when the universe was only 3 billion years old. This region is a giant aggregation of galaxies known as ‘COSTCO-I’, a galaxy protocluster with a total mass of over 400 trillion times the mass of the Sun, and spanning several million light-years across.