A new study suggests that the average temperature of gas throughout the universe has risen more than 10 times during that time period and has reached approximately 2 million degrees Kelvin today, approximately 4 million degrees Fahrenheit .
That’s about ten times the temperature of the gases around the oldest and most distant objects in the universe.
Facts about light
The study , published Oct. 13 in the Astrophysical Journal , examined the thermal history of the universe over the past 10 billion years .
As the universe evolves, gravity pulls dark matter and gas into space to form galaxies and galaxy clusters. The drag is violent, so violent that more and more gas is discharged and heated .
To understand how the universe’s temperature has changed over time, the researchers used data about light in space collected by two missions, the Planck and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey . Planck is the mission of the European Space Agency that operates with a large participation of NASA; Sloan collects detailed images and light spectra of the universe.
They combined data from the two missions and assessed the distances of the hot gases near and far by measuring the redshift , a notion that astrophysicists use to estimate the cosmic age at which distant objects are observed.
The redshift concept works because the light we see from objects farther from Earth is older than the light we see from objects closer to Earth; light from distant objects has traveled a longer journey to reach us. That fact, along with a method for estimating temperature from light, allowed the researchers to measure the average temperature of gases in the early universe – gases that surround the most distant objects – and compare that average to the average temperature. of the gases closest to Earth today.
