Overview
- Researchers report in Nature that the young cluster SPT2349-56 was observed about 12 billion years in the past with intracluster gas at least five times hotter than predictions.
- The team used ALMA and the Sunyaev–Zeldovich effect to measure the cluster’s thermal energy, confirming the unusually high temperature after months of verification.
- Co-author Dazhi Zhou says the gas is hotter and more energetic than in many present-day clusters, highlighting a discrepancy with standard heating models.
- The cluster already hosts more than 30 intensely star-forming galaxies and has a core spanning roughly 500,000 light-years, indicating a massive structure at an early epoch.
- The authors suggest energy injection from three supermassive black holes as a plausible source of the excess heat, a hypothesis that requires further testing.