A huge collision in between two galaxies six billion yrs in the past presented a new achievable rationalization for why galaxies stopped forming stars.
According to the scientists, the chilly gasoline that combines to type stars can escape galaxies in various ways: blown away by black holes, supernovae or galaxies, cooling only when the raw substance for star formation runs out.
To glance for illustrations of galaxies that have just lately disrupted star formation, a crew that provided astronomer Beth employed the Sloan Electronic Sky Study – a single of the biggest and most in-depth astronomical surveys at any time – together with observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter. Array (ALMA) and observed a galaxy soon after a stellar explosion, 7 billion gentle-decades absent that nevertheless exhibits signals of star-forming gas.
Applying the Hubble Area Telescope, the scientists learned a attribute “tail” of gasoline that extends outward from the galaxy. From this unconventional feature, the group reconstructed galactic collisions and the massive gravitational drive that tore aside stars and introduced streams of fuel hundreds of countless numbers of light-yrs away, substantially farther than the two Milkyways extending from one particular close. to the other. stop.
David Seton, a sixth-yr doctoral scholar in physics and astronomy from the Kenneth B. Dietrich Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Seton also uncovered that submit-merger galaxies appear flawlessly regular.
Following the tail fades in a number of hundred million several years, it might search like an additional dead galaxy, also suggesting the approach may be more widespread than it seems, something the staff is now pursuing with other polls, the staff said. researchers. He stated.
In addition to offering clues as to how the universe was born, Seton reported these types of collisions replicate a likelihood for the future of our galaxy.
On August 30, the team announced their results in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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