The oldest strand of the cosmic web of the universe?

The universe contains many, many galaxies, which are distributed in an intricate network of clusters and nodes connected by long threads or filaments. This striking structure of strands is often called the “cosmic web” or the “intergalactic web.” In its strands are many galaxies, while outside of them there is hardly anything detectable from Earth.

It is believed that the cosmic web was the basis of the current distribution of galaxies, having formed these mostly in the threads.

The cosmic web started out tenuous and became more defined over time, as matter was pulled in by gravity.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered a thread populated by 10 galaxies that already existed 830 million years after the Big Bang. The strand, 3 million light-years long, is anchored by a quasar, a galaxy with a very bright nucleus due to the violent activity of a central supermassive black hole.

The team believes that the filament, which we now see as it was 830 million years after the Big Bang, must have evolved into a massive cluster of galaxies, much like the well-known Coma Cluster in the near, recent universe.

“I was really surprised at how long and narrow this filament is,” says Xiaohui Fan of the University of Arizona in Tucson and a member of the research team.

This distant cosmic panorama, captured by the Webb Space Telescope, shows 10 distant galaxies, marked by 8 white circles, which are linked by a strand of the cosmic web, forming a diagonal line. Two of the circles contain more than one galaxy. This 3 million light-year-long strand is anchored by a quasar (a galaxy with an active supermassive black hole at its core) that is very luminous. The quasar, called J0305-3150, appears in the center of the group of three circles located in the right sector of the image. Its brightness dwarfs that of its host galaxy. (Image: NASA/ESA/CSA/Feige Wang (University of Arizona)/Joseph DePasquale (STScI))

The cosmic web is the largest-scale structure of matter in the universe. The web includes the mysterious and as-yet-unseen material called dark matter. As its name suggests, dark matter does not emit light, so no telescope can see it.

Dark matter is the main component of the threads. In recent years, it has been discovered that such strands are gigantic: they typically stretch for hundreds of millions of light-years.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the result of an international collaboration led by NASA, ESA and CSA, respectively the US, European and Canadian space agencies. (Fountain: NCYT by Amazings)