Universe's Wild Youth Seeded Universe with Iron

Further evidence that the universe underwent a wild youthful period has arisen with the recent discovery that iron is spread evenly between the galaxies in one of the largest known galaxy clusters.

This violent period roughly 10 billion years ago is believed to have seeded the cosmos with its heavy elements necessary for life.

Published in the journal Nature, the study included an analysis of 84 sets of X-ray telescope observation from the Japanese-US Suzaku satellite. The researchers, from the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology and Stanford University, focused primarily on the distribution of iron throughout the Perseus cluster, located 250 million light-years away.

"We saw that iron is spread out between the galaxies remarkably smoothly," Norbert Werner, an astrophysicist at KIPAC and lead author of the paper, said in a statement. "That means it had to be present in the intergalactic gas before the Perseus cluster formed."

According to the researchers, the period between 10 billion to 12 billion years ago saw both intense star formation and explosions, creating massive amounts of heavy elements.

"The combined energy of these cosmic phenomena must have been strong enough to expel most of the metals from the galaxies at early times and to enrich and mix the intergalactic gas," said co-author and KIPAC graduate student Ondrej Urban.

In order to determine if the heavy elements created through these processes spread out through space, versus remaining close to home, the scientists examined the Perseus cluster in eight different directions. Focusing on the 10-million-degree gas found between galaxies, they found iron extending to the very edges of the cluster.

Based on their findings, the scientists believe that Perseus is far from unique, with iron evenly spread throughout all massive galaxy clusters.

"You are older than you think -- or at least, some of the iron in your blood is older, formed in galaxies millions of light years away and billions of years ago," co-author Aurora Simionescu, a researcher currently with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, said.