Hydrogen Space Clouds Puzzling

The Hubble Space Telescope is presenting astrophysicists with a tantalizing puzzle: the existence of hydrogen clouds in space that should have dissipated billions of years ago. “It’s by far the most significant result Hubble has made so far,” says Ed Weiler, the space telescope’s program manager at NASA headquarters.

The Hubble spotted the clouds between Earth and the nearest quasar about four or five months ago. Until then, scientists were comfortable with a theory that hydrogen clouds resulted from the Big Bang that created the universe 15 billion years ago and that they slowly formed into galaxies, stars and planets over the next few billion years.

But when a Hubble scientist looked at a quasar named 3c273, which is only 2 billion light years from Earth, he saw evidence that eventually led to the discovery of nine to 16 clouds with a density the same as it would have been 10 billion to 12 billion years ago.

“This truly is a mystery,” said Weiler. “How did these clouds survive to this day? Are they being created somehow by some mechanism we don’t understand? If they are created, how are they being held together?”