A second look at a group of massive young galaxies 11billion light-years away has revealed these juvenile giants in the throes of acelestial baby boom, birthing stars at an astonishing scale and rate.
The new glimpse of such a productive early universe ? seenas it looked 3 billion years after the BigBang ? may change the way scientists think about star formation.
"These measurements have revealed the new population ofgalaxies to be hotter than expected, due to stars forming far much more rapidlythan we previously believed," researcher Scott Chapman of the Institute ofAstronomy in Cambridge, England, said in a release.
"With the data we had before, we couldn't tell exactlywhere the infrared light from these galaxies comes from," said Rob Ivison,a professor at the University of Edinburgh. But using the instruments aboard Herschel,Ivison said, "we can see that this is the signature of starformation."
"It was amazing and surprising to see the observationsuncover such a dramatic population of previously unseen galaxies," said IsaacRoseboom, a research fellow at the University of Sussex.
Future observations will investigate the details of thegalaxies' power source and try to establish how they will develop once theirintense bursts of activity come to an end.
- Top 10 Star Mysteries
- Video ? The Herschel and Planck Missions
- Spectacular Nebulas in Deep Space
Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.
