In the early universe, astronomers discovered a surprise: a young galaxy very similar to ours, the Milky Way.
The newfoundie galaxy is called SPT0418-47 and, given the great distance from Earth, astronomers see the galaxy as it was when the universe was just 1.4 billion years old – roughly 12 billion years before today.
The discovery came as a big surprise to the researchers. Stars formed quickly, as expected, because there was a lot of gas available when the universe was young. But despite the chaos, SPT0418-47 had a well-defined, rotating disk and galactic “bump” in the center. That’s a similar structure as the Milky Way‘s today; moreover, the observed bulge is the farthest ever found in our universe.
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However, analogues between SPT0418-47 and the Milky Way are not perfect. The Milky Way sportso distinctively barred–spiral form, formed by large “arms” of stars and gas. But SPT0418-47 lacks such arms; moreover, scientists expect it to fully evolve into another type of galaxy, an elliptical galaxy.
Yet the newly discovered galaxy provides insight into the evolution of these massive stellar structures across the ions. Based on this new finding, it appears that there may have been less dramatic change in the galaxy than previously thought.
“The structures we observe in nearby spiral galaxies and in our Milky Way were in place as early as 12 billion years ago,” led author Francesca Rizzo, a Ph.D. student of the Germany Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, said in a statement from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
It was the mighty one Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter Array (ALMA) allowing astronomers to spy on SPT0418-47. ALMA consists of 66 antennas spread across the Chilean desert, working together to create one large telescopic lens. The newly discovered galaxy was too volatile to be observed immediately, so ALMA used a technique called “gravity lensing” to overcome the problem, by increasing the light of SPT0418-47 with the gravity of a nearby galaxy.
Gravitational launching may produce some disturbance, but in this case the alignment between the two galaxies was almost exact, according to the statement. This makes SPT0418-47 appear as an almost perfect ring in the raw images. Researchers have discovered the true shape and gas motion of the galaxy with a new computer model.
Future telescopes, such as ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope, will continue to peer into the early universe to better determine how common the shape of SPT0418-47 was among the galactic population of the era.
A study based on the research was published on Wednesday (August 12) in the journal Nature.
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