Insights The Evolution of the Universe, Cosmic Web and Connections

[Prof Mark R Smith]

The universe was not perfectly uniform when it started, some areas had a higher density than others. During the evolution of the universe, these areas of high density contained most of the matter and started forming galaxies where there was the highest concentration of matter. This large-scale structure (‘cosmic web’) connects the observed clusters of galaxies via a series of filaments. Figure 1 is a model of what this looks like.

Figure 1: Skeleton of a cosmic web traced out by an algorithm run on a sample of observed galaxies. The far right shows the complete web, and the left images show close-up portions. Blue areas are points of higher density. 


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[Dragrath]

Doesn't seen surprising to me I mean nodes tend to be where galaxy clusters form which seen to have relatively quickly built massive dense galaxies not long after the formation of the universe. Moreover most of these behemoth galaxies contain large supermassive to ultra massive black holes and hot gas radiating primarily in the X ray regime. As any other galaxies entering the vacinity experience extreme tidal stripping and or ram pressure stripping it wouldn't really matter how much gas they had in such extreme enviornments. It is primarily going to be funneled into the heart of the monster lurking within either feeding it or getting energetically ejected heating up the surrounding material inducing quenching. The nearest galaxy node is M87 and it certainly isn't undergoing star formation... Am I missing something here that would make this outcome less obvious? The Quasar epoch and galaxy clusters are always what I think of for well connected galaxies sitting at the heart of nodes and they are especially devoid of star formation.

 

[Prof Mark R Smith]

Nothing surprising, this is an overview of the cosmic process which applies to various galaxies and the composition of matter within and surrounding!