The high energy realms of the luminous Universe account for most of its mass across all of cosmic time. Maps of this hot gas are records of structure in its becoming; direct observations of the otherwise invisible engines of cosmic change. From the dynamos of infant suns to the gigaparsec-scale pillars that give shape to the expanse, hot gas is the observable beacon for the most fundamental of nature’s unseen instruments. It is the fuel reservoir for feedback loops that drive the evolution of galaxies. It is the final state of doomed matter that spirals around event horizons. If the story of discovery has been one of expansion into unknown spaces, we are ready to write its next volume with signal from the hidden cosmos.
Gas hotter than a few hundred thousand Kelvin shines brightest in X-rays, and Astro2020 has recommended that a powerful X-ray observatory be the second
entrant (with co-equal priority to the Far-Infrared Mission) to the Great Observatories Maturation program. Astro2020 notes that
the X-ray mission should have large collecting area, high spatial resolution, and high spectral resolution, "with some of the capabilities of the proposed Lynx".
The Lynx X-ray Observatory was one of the four NASA-funded Large Mission Concept studes presented to the Decadal. Learn more about it below.
