Astronomers have just discovered a momentous find. They say it's a cluster of galaxies they believe is a baryon acoustic oscillation or a relic from the early universe. It’s an acoustic wave that once reverberated through the universe, but now hangs still out in the cosmos.
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC]
00:03 Astronomers have just discovered a momentous find.
00:06 They say it's a cluster of galaxies they believe is a baryon acoustic oscillation, or BAO,
00:12 what is essentially a relic from the early universe.
00:14 An acoustic wave that once reverberated through the cosmos, but is now hanging out in deep space.
00:19 They've named it Ho'ole'ilana, and it's only 820 million light-years away.
00:24 The closest BAO ever discovered.
00:26 And it's absolutely huge.
00:27 So big the researchers weren't even looking for it.
00:29 But they discovered it as it was so large it overlapped with an area of the sky they were already observing.
00:34 Here's what the astronomers had to say about its discovery.
00:37 "The very large diameter of 1 billion light-years is beyond theoretical expectations.
00:42 If its formation and evolution are in accordance with theory, this BAO is closer than anticipated,
00:47 implying a high value for the expansion rate of the universe."
00:50 Meaning it could tell us a whole lot about how the universe evolved and continues to evolve over time.
00:55 The area includes densely situated galaxies, more dense than you would normally find in a galactic cluster.
01:01 Experts say that when the universe was in its infancy, it was full of dense plasma which was fluid-like,
01:06 allowing inward and outward pressure to produce spherical waves that still have remnants today.
01:11 [ Music ]