Outspoken Science

Scientist Found Hyperactive Galaxies while Looking 11 Billion Years in Past

Posted on August 7, 2009 with No Comments

Scientist have found hyperactive galaxies while looking 11 billion year in past. They have measured the speed of stars in a distant galaxy that is around 11 billion light year far from us and found that stars are rotating at a speed of 1 million mile per hour. This speed is twice the speed of our sun in Milky Way Galaxy.

Comparison of Milky Way and Compact Galaxy

Scientists used combined power of Hubble Space Telescope of NASA and 8-meter Gemini South Telescope in Chile. While Hubble found that size of these distant galaxies are a fraction of the galaxies we see today, Gemini telescope is used to clock their speed using Spectroscopy.

According to Pieter van Dokkum, professor of astronomy and physics at Yale University and head of this project, the galaxy they have seen is very small as compared to all modern galaxies like our own Milky Way. But the motion of stars is as if they were in a giant galaxy. Now it is matter of discussion that how it is possible for these galaxies containing so much mass in such a small volume can form in early universe and then evolve into galaxies like we see in near universe.

The team behind this research combined data from NASA,s Hubble Telescope and Gemini South Telescope in Chile. While data collected by Hubble Space Telescope confirmed that the galaxy under observation is very small than the galaxies we see today, 8-meter Gemini telescope measured the motion of stars.

In words of Mariska Kriek of Princeton University, New Jersy, a team member in this research:

“By looking at this galaxy we are able to look back in time and see what galaxies looked like in the distant past when the universe was very young.”

What conclusion they got from this:

Right now it’s hard to say for any of astronomers that how such compact and massive galaxies form and why they are not seen in current universe. But one possibility says that it may be the dense central region of a very large galaxy that is going to form eventually. So it may be concluded that centers of big galaxies formed first in the beginning of universe.

What next?

Astronomers are planning to study the formation of these galaxies by observing galaxies in farther back in time. They will use Wide Field Camera 3, recently installed on Hubble Space Telescope.

According to van Dokkum:

“The ancestors of these extreme galaxies should have quite spectacular properties as they probably formed a huge amount of stars, in addition to a massive black hole, in a relatively short amount of time.”

Most important questions to be answered:

There are 2 most strange questions about this research:

1)      How it is possible for those galaxies to contain so much mass in such a small size?

2)      If it was the starting of formation of galaxies then how galaxies grew so much in past 10 billion years that we see in today  universe?

To solve these problems scientist have to understand the dynamics of these young compact galaxies. We should hope that this study of past will help us to solve many more puzzles regarding the evolution of universe.

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