Cosmic Filament :
The University of Oxford researchers reported a roughly 50-million-lightyear-long cosmic Filament traced by at least 14 galaxies.
- Cosmic or galaxy filaments are the largest ‘threads’ in the universe’s cosmic web.
- A single cosmic filament is a structure spanning hundreds of millions of lightyears.
- These filaments are the largest known structures in the Universe which are vast, thread-like formations of galaxies and dark matter that form cosmic scaffolding.
- They serve as the nurseries where galaxies grow by accreting pristine gas that fuels their star formation.
- It is formed as a result of gravity pulling in gas, dark matter and galaxies into long, thin strands that link giant clusters of galaxies.
- These filaments also surround large, empty regions of space called voids.
- A filament forms where sheets of matter intersect and collapse; they’re also highways along which gas and smaller galaxies ‘flow’ towards big clusters.
- These filaments help decide where galaxies form, how fast they grow, and how much fresh gas they receive over billions of years.
