A Quick Look at the Cold Front in the Perseus Cluster
Astronomers have used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to study a gigantic and resilient "cold front" in the Perseus galaxy cluster.
This cold front consists of a band of gas with a "cool" temperature of about 30 million degrees moving through lower density, 80-million-degree gas.
Scientists determined this cold front spans about 2 million light years, moves at speeds around 300,000 mph, and formed some 5 billion years ago.
Not only has it survived for so long, the cold front has also remained surprisingly sharp and split into two different pieces.
This suggests that magnetic fields are wrapped around the cold front, which formed before the birth of our Solar System, preserving it.