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The universe is getting hotter as it ages, scientists said.
New research has explored the temperature of the universe over the past 10 billion years in an attempt to understand its “thermal history”.
They found that the average temperature of the gas across the cosmos increased more than 10 times during that time – and today it is around two million degrees Celsius.
The research – published last month on Astrophysical Journal – relied on and confirmed the work of Jim Peebles, who won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the large-scale structure of the universe. Warming is the result of that structure and how it changes over time as a result of the motion of galaxies and clusters of galaxies.
“As the universe evolves, gravity pulls dark matter and gas into space together into galaxies and galaxy clusters,” said Yi-Kuan Chiang, lead author of the study. “The resistance is violent, so violent that more and more gasoline is shocked and heated.”
To control the temperature of the universe, the researchers devised a way that would allow them to estimate what would be farther from the Earth – than looking back in time when observed – and to compare it with the approximations of the heat observed closest to us. both physically and over time.
These measurements were collected using different properties of light. They could gauge distance using “redshift,” an effect that occurs when light becomes redder as it lengthens its journey through the universe; and they could gauge the temperature from that same light.
The difference between the two allowed them to understand the change over time. And it showed that it was indeed getting warmer and would likely continue over time.
“We have measured temperatures throughout the history of the universe,” said Brice Ménard, professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins. “As time goes by, all of those galaxy clusters are getting hotter and hotter because their gravity is pulling more and more gas towards them.”
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