Inside the gas, in (blue) filaments connecting (orange) galaxies, rare areas of intact gas are hidden. These are remnants of the Big Bang, which have managed to die out because of the explosive death of stars. Here are considered as circular shock waves around the orange dots.
Relic gas cloud, orphaned after the Big Bang, was found by astronomers using the most powerful optical telescope in the world, Keck Observatory (Hawaii). This is an important discovery of the cosmic “fossil”, able to improve the understanding of how the first galaxies in the Universe were formed.
Just look at the sky! Everywhere you look, all gas is polluted with heavy elements from exploded stars. But a particular cloud seems untouched 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang. If there are any heavy elements, they should cover less than 1/10000 of the proportion on the Sun. This is incredibly small and indicates that we have a relic of the Big Bang. For the study, ESI and HIRES instruments were used to observe the spectra of the quasar behind the gas cloud. A quasar that emits a bright light of matter (falls into a supermassive black hole) provides a source of light where spectral shadows of hydrogen in a gas cloud are viewed.
This is the third fossil cloud found in the universe. The first two noticed in 2011. These are occasional discoveries and extremely rare phenomena for search. Now researchers are planning to study these features in detail, which will make it possible to understand how gases created stars and galaxies in the early Universe, as well as why some did not.
