14 DAY TRIAL // According to scientists at the Durham University, the galaxies in the early Universe were highly active when it came to forming new stars, and generated about 50 of the new suns every year. The experts determined that previous estimates about the setup inside these galaxies were a bit off, in that their ability to form new stars was overestimated. The investigators that arrived at the new conclusion are based at the DU Institute for Computational Cosmology. The galaxies that were surveyed in the new study lay about 12.5 billion light-years away.
The main target of the investigation was a galaxy known as MS1358arc, which is believed to have formed about one billion years after the Big Bang, at the end of the Cosmos' Reionization Epoch. The formation was analyzed through an astronomical observation method known as gravitational lensing – which refers to using the gravity of a nearby cluster to magnify images of distant galaxies. The study revealed intense bursts of star formation in these stellar nurseries, which were up to 100 times more active than previously estimated.
The DU experts believe that this galaxy is representative of all those in the early Universe, and add that this is the most thorough study of such a formation ever undertaken. The research revealed that MS1358arc was about 6,000 light-years across, and that it met all conditions that would allow for it to evolve into a structure such as our own Milky Way. In the study, the DU team used the Hawaii-based Gemini North telescope, as well as the American space agency's Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, two of NASA's Great Observatories.
“The runaway effect in this galaxy suggests it is growing much faster than expected. Given the size of the star forming regions, we would expect it to be forming stars at the rate of about one sun per year, but it seems to be much more active than that. We think this galaxy is fairly typical of galaxies at this time and we expect that the Milky Way once looked like this as it formed its first stars. In effect we are seeing the first generation of stars being born in a galaxy like the Milky Way. This gives unique insight into the birth of our own galaxy,” DU ICC expert Dr. Mark Swinbank, the lead author of the study, says.