Astronomers studying the outskirts of a distant galaxy have discovered the galaxy sits in a serene ocean of gas.<\/p>\n
The massive galaxy, which is about four billion light years from Earth, is surrounded by a halo of gas that is much less dense and less magnetised than expected.<\/p>\n
The finding was published today in the journal Science<\/em>.<\/p>\n Co-author Associate Professor Jean-Pierre Macquart, from the Â鶹ֱ²¥ node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), said gas on the outskirts of galaxies has traditionally been hard to study.<\/p>\n \u201cThe halo of gas can actually extend out 10 times further than the stars in a galaxy, and can contain a substantial amount of the matter that\u2019s in a galaxy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut it\u2019s very difficult to see the gas directly with a telescope.\u201d<\/p>\n Associate Professor Macquart said this discovery was made using a new technique involving fast radio bursts\u2014powerful flashes of energy from deep space.<\/p>\n \u201cFast radio bursts come from all over the sky and last for just milliseconds,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey involve incredible energy\u2014equivalent to the amount released by the Sun in 80 years.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not sure what causes them, and have only recently been able to pinpoint the galaxies they come from.\u201d<\/p>\n Associate Professor Macquart said the research team looked at how a single fast radio burst distorted as it travelled five billion light years through the Universe.<\/p>\n Along the way, the burst shot through a galaxy\u2019s halo of gas, like a lighthouse\u2019s beam cutting through fog.<\/p>\n Associate Professor Macquart said the researchers expected the signal from the fast radio burst to be distorted by the galaxy.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you go out on a hot summer\u2019s day, you see the air shimmering and the trees in the background look distorted because of the temperature and density fluctuations in the air,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what we thought would happen, that the signal from the fast radio burst would be completely distorted after passing through the hot atmosphere of the galaxy.<\/p>\n \u201cBut instead of the stormy galactic \u2018weather\u2019 we were expecting, the pulse we observed had travelled through a calm sea of unperturbed gas.\u201d<\/p>\n The finding suggests that galaxy halos are much more serene than previously thought, with gas that is less turbulent, less dense and less magnetised than expected.<\/p>\n One reason astronomers are so interested in galaxy halos is because they can help us understand why material is ejected from galaxies, causing them to stop growing.<\/p>\n University of California Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics J. Xavier Prochaska, who led the research, said halo gas provides a fossil record of these ejection processes.<\/p>\n \u201cSo our observations can inform theories about how matter is ejected and how magnetic fields are transported from the galaxy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Professor Prochaska said the team now plans to test other galaxies.<\/p>\n \u201cOur research appears to reveal something entirely new about galactic halos,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cUnless of course this galaxy happens to be just some weird exception\u2014and with only one object you can\u2019t be sure about that.\u201d<\/p>\n The research used a fast radio burst that was detected in November by CSIRO\u2019s Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), in outback Western Australia.<\/p>\n The telescope is a precursor to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), which will be the world\u2019s largest radio telescope when it\u2019s built in the next decade.<\/p>\n The study was led by Professor Xavier Prochaska from the University of California and involved 19 researchers from around the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Astronomers studying the outskirts of a distant galaxy have discovered the galaxy sits in a serene ocean of gas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4307,"featured_media":11818,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_research-areas":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,40],"tags":[],"research-areas":[],"class_list":["post-19369","media-release","type-media-release","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-and-global-community","category-research","category-technology"],"acf":{"post_options":{"":null,"additional_content":{"title":"","content":"","image":false},"related_courses":false,"credits":{"author":"","photographer":"","media":false},"display_author":true,"banner":{"image":false}}},"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/ASKAP_image6-resized-for-web-1000x500.jpg","author_meta":{"first_name":"Lucien","last_name":"Wilkinson","display_name":"Lucien Wilkinson"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release\/19369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/media-release"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release\/19369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19369"},{"taxonomy":"research-areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-areas?post=19369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}