Astronomer Spots Never-Before-Seen Hydrogen River Flowing Through Space

An astronomer at the University of West Virginia believes he has discovered a never-before-seen hydrogen river that is flowing through space and streaming into the galaxy of NGC 6946. His discovery is attributed to the use of the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope.

D.J. Pisano, the man who made the alleged discovery, is an assistant professor in the physics department at West Virginia University and is also an adjunct assistant astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

"A leading theory is that rivers of hydrogen - known as cold flows - may be ferrying hydrogen through intergalactic space, clandestinely fuelling star formation," said Pisano, in this Forbes article. "But this tenuous hydrogen has been simply too diffuse to detect, until now."

Through the use of the telescope, Pisano spotted a faint filament of gas flowing into a nearby galaxy. This galaxy, NGC 6946, is also known as the "Fireworks Galaxy" and is about 22.5 million light-years away from Earth, located in the constellations Cepheus and Cygnus. It is known as an "active star factory" because it is a starburst galaxy, which undergoes a high rate of star formation.

Other astronomers have already seen an extended halo of hydrogen located in that galactic area, but Pisano believes to have discovered a "cold flow" of hydrogen, which would be from a completely different source.

These cold flows, Pisano explains, are expected to trace the "cosmic web" that connects galaxies to one another. He says that the only other explanation for this hydrogen river is that the NGC 6946 galaxy had a close run-in with another galaxy, in which case it would have left behind a ribbon of hydrogen. But a telltale determinant of such an occurrence would reveal a small number of stars located within the filaments. That is not the case in this situation.

Pisano's next goal is to use his Green Bank Telescope to explore other galaxies to see if there are other cold flows fueling star formations and connectivity throughout the universe.

To read more about this, visit the online Forbes article.