“This is just one galaxy - it could be an outlier. It’s a prodigious star former, creating new stars at a rate 20 times higher than galaxies today - a characteristic common to many early galaxies - but it also has a cool, thin disk with little turbulence - something seen rarely in galaxies of that epoch. The galaxy, in addition to its record-breaking status, has a peculiar mash-up of characteristics. Scientists are debating whether this age boundary is an effect of observing limits, or the result of a physical mechanism in the early universe. Today over 70 percent of galaxies have spiral arms. With the new data, the title of earliest spiral galaxy now goes to A1689B11, which, after galaxy Q2343-BX442, is only the second spiral galaxy to be found within the first 3.3 billion years of the universe’s life.Īt 2.5 billion years, the universe seems to have been mostly filled with clumpy and irregular galaxies, but just one billion years later, spiral galaxies are commonly found. For over 50 years, scientists have been debating how spiral galaxies are formed, and if they can maintain their figures over the long term. Unlike their cousin elliptical galaxies, which can look like homely blobs by comparison, spiral galaxies have spinning arms and bars filled with brilliant star formation. They think this galaxy might be one of the first of its kind, representing the beginning of the era of disk galaxies. Recently, scientists discovered the earliest spiral galaxy ever seen - imaging it as it looked when the universe was only two-and-a-half billion years old.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |