Xinhua News Agency, Nanjing, March 25th (Reporter Wang Yan) On the 25th, reporters learned from the Zijinshan Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences that an international study involving scholars from eight countries including China, the United States, France, and Germany revealed the mysterious "giant Where is the "Long Man Bubble" Lyman-Alpha air group coming from. This research is important for understanding how many galaxies, including the Milky Way, formed.
The so-called Lyman-Alpha air mass is a huge cloud of gas. They are like giant soap bubbles floating in the universe, filled with gas. These "Big Mac Bubbles" are several times the size of the Milky Way, they are very far from the earth, but they can reach billions of times the brightness of the sun. These gas clouds contain important information about galaxy formation and demise. In recent years, astronomers have been working to solve the mystery of the origin of the Lyman-Alpha air mass.
This time, the research team used the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory and the Atacama Large Millimeter / Sub-millimeter Wave Antenna Array (ALMA) in Chile. The Man-Alpha air mass was observed. In this air mass, researchers rarely saw signs of gas falling towards the center.
By analyzing the gas spectrum and composition, researchers have determined that the huge energy of the Lehman-Alpha air group comes from the galaxy that produces stars in its center, and the gas that falls to the center comes from the material between the galaxies. A galaxy that forms a large number of stars has the opportunity to generate "giant jumbo bubbles" that stretch for hundreds of thousands of light years. After the hot gas between the galaxies cools, it is pulled toward the center by gravity, forming a falling airflow in the center of the "bubble".
"Especially this airflow falling towards the center is closely related to the formation of galaxies and may contain key information about the growth and evolution of galaxies." Ao Yiping, a researcher at the Purple Mountain Observatory who led this research, introduced that the Lehman-Alpha air group is currently There are still many unsolved mysteries. As the research progresses further, people are expected to learn more details, and use these "big bubbles" in the universe to unlock the mysteries of galaxy evolution.
Related research results have recently been published in "Nature · Astronomy".