14 DAY TRIAL // Astrophysicists at the Rutgers University were in charge of a new cosmic survey of the southern sky, which led to the discovery of ten previously-unknown galaxy clusters, that were found through the shadows they “emitted” on the cosmic microwave background (CMB).
The CMB can best be described as residual light that permeates the Universe. It is made up of unabsorbed photons that were produced when the Big Bang exploded the Universe into being.
Recently, astronomers developed a breakthrough technique that allows them to look for so-called shadows in the CMB, in search for signs of massive galactic clusters. The best way to detect these structures is through large, uniform surveys, such as the recent one.
The investigation was led by Rutgers experts, but features researchers from several countries. Details of the work will appear in the November 10 issue of the esteemed Astrophysical Journal.
Together with collaborators at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (PUC), the American researchers used optical telescopes to verify the discoveries made through analyzing the CMB.
The team determined that the ten galactic clusters were indeed at the locations where their shadows had been detected in the universal microwave background, Space Fellowship reports.
According to the international science group, it's studies such as this one that give the international scientific community the knowledge they need for determining how the Universe was born, and how it continues to evolve.
“The groundbreaking observations at Atacama, led by Lyman Page of Princeton University, surveyed large areas of the sky to reveal shadows that pointed astronomers to these previously unseen massive galaxy clusters,” explains Felipe Menanteau.
The expert holds an appointment as a research scientist in physics and astronomy at the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences. He says that the team first began conducting the survey using the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile, back in 2008.
“The ’shadows’ that ACT revealed are not shadows in the traditional sense, as they are not caused by the galaxy clusters blocking light from another source,” adds Rutger professor of physics and astronomy Jack Hughes, who was a member of the study team.
“Rather, the hot gases within the galaxy clusters cause a tiny fraction of the cosmic background radiation to shift to higher energies, which then makes them appear as shadows in one of ACT’s observing bands,” he goes on to say.