Astronomers have found a galaxy so distant that when they look at it, they see conditions going back to when the universe was in its relative infancy
The galaxy, shown in this artist's impression, is 1-2% the Milky Way's mass
The system is small: about 1-2% the mass of the Milky Way and is rich in
heavier elements. But it has a surprising feature: it is turning gas and dust into new stars at
a remarkable rate, churning them out hundreds of times faster than our own
galaxy can. It is the second far-flung galaxy known that has been found to have a high
star-production rate.
Prof Finkelstein said: "One very interesting way to learn about the Universe
is to study these outliers and that tells us something about what sort of
physical processes are dominating galaxy formation and galaxy evolution. "What was great about this galaxy is not only is it so distant, it is also
pretty exceptional." He added that in the coming years, astronomers are likely to discover even
more distant galaxies when Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is launched
and other ground-based telescopes come online.
Commenting on the research, Dr Marek Kukula, Public Astronomer at the Royal
Observatory Greenwich, told BBC News: "This, along with some other evidence,
shows that there are already quite surprisingly evolved galaxies in the very
early Universe . "This high star-formation rate maybe is a clue as to why these galaxies can
form so quickly."
Prof Alfonso Aragon-Salamanca, from the University of Nottingham, added:
"This is an important step forward, but we need to continue looking for more. "The further away we go, the closer we will get to discovering the very first
stars that ever formed in the Universe. The next generation of telescopes will
make this possible."
