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M. Markevitch, A. Vikhlinin, S. Murray, W. Forman, L. VanSpeybroeck (SAO)
I will review recent Chandra results on the gas temperature and density distributions of several nearby merging clusters, including A2142, A3667, A754, A2218, A2163. With the Chandra angular resolution, clusters no longer look like diffuse symmetric blobs in the sky. In A2142, A3667 and probably some other systems, we observe a new phenomenon -- remarkably sharp, edge-shaped gas density discontinuities, or ``cold fronts" (to be contrasted to shock fronts), apparently delineating large cool remnants of the former dense subcluster cores flying through the surrounding shock-heated gas with high velocity. In one particularly well-observed cluster, A3667, a detailed study of such a cold front allows us to determine the bulk velocity of the subcluster gas and estimate the intracluster magnetic field.