Astronomers have found a ‘Melky Way look-alike’ galaxy in deep space, 12 billion light-years from our own, according to a new study.
The study, published in Nature, provides details about the discovery of galaxy SPT0418-47, which not only surprised researchers, but resembled other galaxies in the vicinity, and throws a wrench into what experts previously knew about galaxy formation.
“This result represents a breakthrough in galaxy formation, showing that the structures we are observing in nearby spiral galaxies and in our Milky Way were 12 billion years ago,” said the study’s lead author, Francesca Rizzo, in doctoral student of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, in a statement.
Astronomers using ALMA, of which ESO is a partner, have shown an extremely distant galaxy that looks surprisingly similar to our Milky Way. The galaxy, SPT0418-47, is gravitationally lensed by a nearby galaxy, appearing in the sky as an almost perfect ring of light. (Credit: ESO)
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SPT0418-47 was detected by the Chile Atacama Large Millimeter / Submillimeter Array (ALMA) using a technique known as ‘gravity lensing’, which helps researchers find objects in the distant universe. At 12 billion light-years away, SPT0418-47 is less than 2 billion years younger than the universe itself.
A light-year, which measures distance in space, is about 6 trillion miles.
The astronomers found SPT0418-47 has no spiral arms and is extremely “well ordered”, added co-author Simona Vegetti. It has a rotating disk and bulge, the first time this type of galaxy has been seen so deep in the universe.
‘What we found was quite surprising; despite forming stars at a high rate, and therefore the site of very energetic processes, SPT0418-47 is the most well-ordered galaxy disk ever observed in the early Universe, ‘added Vegetti. “This result is quite unexpected and has important implications for how we think galaxies evolve.”
To reconstruct the true shape of the galaxy, the researchers used computer models and took the images made of “gravity lens” and reconstructed them, which surprised Rizzo.
“When I first saw the reconstructed image of SPT0418-47, I could not believe it,” Rizzo explained. “A treasure chest was opened.”
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Although SPT0418-47 has some similar features to other spiral galaxies, it is expected to evolve into an elliptical galaxy, the researchers added.
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