China’s FAST telescope, China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) discovered the biggest atomic cloud in the universe by far, which is 20 times larger than our Milky Way galaxy.

Chinas FAST telescope discovers the biggest atomic cloud in universe

China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) discovered the biggest atomic cloud in the universe by far, which is 20 times larger than our Milky Way galaxy. The finding was published by an international team led by Chinese scientists in international journal Nature on Wednesday. Using the world’s largest single-dish telescope, the scientists observed a group of galaxies known as Stephan’s Quintet. China’s FAST telescope, The result shows a mammoth low-density gaseous structure existed in a relatively far location from the center of Stephan’s Quintet.

The atomic cloud is roughly 2 million light years wide and made up of hydrogen atoms. One light year is equivalent to about 9.46 trillion kilometers. The latest finding suggests that the gaseous structure may be formed under the influence of interactions between galaxies. It has already existed for 1 billion years. The study also suggested there might be more large-scale, low-density atomic gas structures out in space. China’s FAST telescope, The discovery challenges the current understanding of how the galaxies and the gaseous structure evolved in the universe as “the atomic gas with low density should have been destroyed by the ultraviolet radiation in the cosmic background based on current theories,” according to the lead author Xu Cong from the National Astronomical Observatories under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Source: This news is originally published by cgtn

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