Japanese scientists detect growth in galaxy cluster..

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Thursday 08th April, 04:07 AM JST

TAIPEI —

A team of Japanese scientists claims to have measured growth in a galaxy cluster, the universe’s largest structure bound by gravity, Taiwan’s government-run Academia Sinica said in a press release Wednesday. Galaxy clusters can consist of thousands of galaxies, but they also contain radioactive gases and ‘‘dark matter,’’ an unidentifiable theoretical entity that produces gravitational effects.
   
The scientists focused on a galaxy cluster named Abell 1689, which they said grew after being heated by matter from the adjacent ‘‘cosmic web,’’ a near-void between galaxies containing limited amounts of matter. Nobuhiro Okabe, a postdoctoral fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and Keiichi Umetsu, an associate research fellow at the institute, worked with Madoka Kawaharada, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research in Japan, and several other institutions on the project, the press release said.