Radio telescope observations have revealed a cold stream of intergalactic atomic carbon gas feeding star formation in a massive radio galaxy in the young Universe.
![All [C I] emission around 4C 41.17. (A) The blue and cyan [C I] contours are the same as Figure 1A; the green (marked as radio galaxy `RG’) and red (marked as South-East `SE’) contours show additional velocity channels. The background image is the same as Fig. S1A. The [C I] emission is integrated across the velocity ranges indicated in the legend. Blue and red contour levels start at 2σ and increase by 1σ, with σ = 0.011 Jy bm-1 × km s-1. The green contours start at 3σ and increase by 1σ, with σ = 0.015 Jy bm-1 × km s-1. No correction for primary beam (PB) response was applied. The gray contours show the Lyα halo (background image in Fig. 1A). Two red galaxies in the HST imaging at the base of the stream are probably dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs) (27), marked with arrows. The dotted gray lines indicate two prominent dark lanes (DL) previously identified in the Lyα imaging (17 ,24). Other symbols and labels are the same as Figure 1. (B-H) Spectra of [C I] extracted at the locations of the white crosses in panel A, which capture regions NW1, NW2, NW3, and NW4 of the stream, as well as the radio galaxy (RG), the region West of the radio galaxy that connects to the stream (W), and the region South-East of the radio galaxy (SE). The spectra are Hanning smoothed to a velocity resolution of 29 km s-1 and values have been corrected for the PB response to give flux densities. The colored shaded regions correspond to the velocity ranges in the legend. -- Science](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Expansive.png?resize=1200%2C720&ssl=1)
Radio telescope observations have revealed a cold stream of intergalactic atomic carbon gas feeding star formation in a massive radio galaxy in the young Universe.