Objects in the very young universe are very distant to us, and also not fully comprehensible. The James Webb Space Telescope has the power to see further than we’ve ever been able to. As a result, we learned that what appeared to be a large HFLS3 galaxy with extreme star formation was actually something else.
Reconstruction of the HFLS3 object from 2013. Credit: ESA – C. Carreau.
When we observe the very distant universe, we are looking at something that was a very long time ago, in a very different reality, and that we don’t really understand. They are some objects that remind us of today’s galaxies, for example, but they don’t always have to be what they seem to be.
Gareth Jones. Kredit: University of Oxford.
One such object is HFLS3, which we observe in a universe that is only 880 million years old. After its discovery in 2013, astronomers considered HFLS3 to be a galaxy. It was supposed to be a very early galaxy, where the maniacal creation of new stars took place.
In today’s Milky Way, stars are born in an amount corresponding to about 8 Suns per year. In HFLS3, it’s like a star factory, producing stars with the mass of about 3,000 Suns per year. If anyone was there watching then, it must have been a monumental fireworks display. The James Webb Space Telescope recently showed that HFLS3 is actually a fascinating case of false identity.
Logo. Kredit: University of Oxford.
Webb and a team led by Gareth Jones of the University of Oxford found that HFLS3 is not a galaxy. Or, more accurately, it’s not the only galaxy. They are actually six early galaxies colliding in an absolutely stunning multi-galaxy collision. For experts, the insanely intense star formation in the HFLS3 object was initially difficult to understand. But when we know that it is actually a collision of collisions of galaxies, it suddenly becomes much clearer.
The mentioned collisions of the HFLS3 object at the dawn of time take place (or rather once took place) in a space of about 36 thousand light years. That’s not so much. It was three pairs of small galaxies that were caught in each other’s gravitational forces, which brought them to an inevitable collision. As galactic collisions tend to do, it didn’t happen right away. It could have lasted about 1 billion years.
At the stage in which the six colliding galaxies are now observed, the galaxies are so close to each other that they are churning up cosmic dust and gas. This triggers the dramatic formation of new stars that we observe in the HFLS3 object. The HFLS3 collision is one of the most intense galaxy collisions known in the early universe.
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2024-01-01 02:14:32
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