Interesting story, thanks Patrick. (If you don't subscribe to Patrick's news, I advise doing so. Saves a lot of time...best astro search engine on the Web: Patrick Wiggins!) The "100-million-degree gas cloud" mentioned in the story is rather misleading, if I recall my astro-physics classes correctly. Sounds hot as Hades, but IIRC, the gas is so tenuous that if you immersed your cold lunch in it, it wouldn't even warm it up. Hot gas must be dense enough for conduction to become noticeable on a human scale. While the indivdual atoms of intergalactic gas may have extremely high energies, they are just too few and far between to warm anything in their midst substantially. Something like an atom for every cubic meter; almost a perfect vacuum. However, the clouds are so large, and the collective radiation is so great, that we can detect it here on distant Earth. Rich, you're the physicist of the group, am I remembering correctly? Thanks C. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax http://taxes.yahoo.com/