CNN Indonesia
Wednesday, 22 Feb 2023 16:44 WIB
Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —
Galaxy Milky Way or Milky Way place Earth turns out to have a twin. Astonishingly, this galaxy turned out to be ‘cannibals’.
The twin Milky Way was discovered by a number of experts from Swinburne University of Technology, Australia using the James Webb Telescope. The galaxy, named ‘Sparkler’, is an ‘early stage’ twin of the Milky Way.
Launch Phys, the Milky Way’s twin galaxy is located 9 billion light years from Earth. In that galaxy there are two dozen clusters of millions of stars bound by gravity.
According to the researchers, Sparkler greedily ‘devours’ nearby objects to grow bigger and bigger.
Experts found Sparkler after examining the photo of the deepest galaxy made by the James Webb Telescope, last July 2022. It is the most detailed and deepest color photograph of the galaxy ever.
In the photo, the Sparkler galaxy looks like a crinkled orange line surrounded by dots of light. After being analyzed, it was found that the galaxy actually grew by eating objects around it, much like the Milky Way in its early days.
The results of the analysis have been published in the journal of the Royal Astronomical Society on December 26.
“We seem to be witnessing the assembly of this galaxy as it builds up its own mass in the form of dwarf galaxies and some globular clusters,” said Duncan Forbes, professor of astrophysics at Swinburne University of Technology who authored the study. LiveScience.
“We are excited about the unique opportunity to study both globular cluster formation and the ‘infant’ Milky Way, at a time when the Universe is one third of its current age,” he added.
To get to Earth, the light from Sparkler has to travel 9 billion years. The light captured by James Webb also describes the condition of the galaxy when it was 4 billion years old.
At this point in the timeline of the Universe’s history, Sparkler’s mass is only 3 percent that of the Milky Way. However, experts suspect, Sparkler will match the mass of the Milky Way today.
The reason is, experts have found several key things that are similar between Sparkler and the Milky Way.
They analyzed the globular clusters surrounding Sparkler and found stars that resembled the 200 globular clusters around the Milky Way but in a younger version.
“The origin of globular clusters is still an unsolved mystery. We are excited that JWST can look back to see a younger version of these globular clusters,” said study co-author and San Jose State University astronomy professor, Aaron Romanowsky. .
(can/lth)
