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Temperature has increased about 10-fold over the last 10 billion years

November 20, 2020

Temperature has increased about 10-fold over the last 10 billion years

Man looking at very starry sky and visible galaxy in sky

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The universe is getting hotter, a new study has found.

The study, published Oct. 13 in The Astrophysical Journal, probed the thermal history of the universe over the last 10 billion years. It found that the mean temperature of gas across the universe has increased more than 10 times over that time period and reached about 2 million degrees Kelvin today - approximately 4 million degrees Fahrenheit.

"Our new measurement provides a direct confirmation of the seminal work by Jim Peebles - the 2019 Nobel Laureate in Physics - who laid out the theory of how the large-scale structure forms in the universe," said Yi-Kuan Chiang, lead author of the study and a research fellow at The Ohio State University Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics.

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