Washington: Scientists have discovered rare “star-making machine” in distant universe, producing stars at big bursts at a rate of up to 4,000 per year, a development that is in contrast to our Milky Way galaxy that pumps out an average of just 10 stars per year.
“This galaxy is undergoing a major baby boom, galaxy that producing most of its stars all at once,” said Peter Capak of Nasa’s Spitzer Science Centre at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.
The discovery, detailed in the July issue of Institute of Astrophysical Journal Letters, means that if the human of population was produced in a similar boom, “then almost all of the people alive today would be the same age”.
Nasa’s Hubble Space Telescope and Japan’s Subaru atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii, first spotted the “Baby Boom” galaxy in visiblelight images, where it appeared as an inconspicuous smudge due to is great distance.
The discovery goes against the most common theory of galaxy formation that believes that galaxies slowly bulk up their stars over time by absorbing tiny pieces of galaxies and not in one big burst as observed in the newfound “Baby Boom” galaxy, the Science Daily said in a report on Friday.
“The incredible star-formation activity suggests that we may be witnessing, for the first time, the formation of one of the most massive elliptical galaxies in the universe,” said co-author Nick Scoville of Caltech, the principal investigator of the Cosmic Evolution Survey, also known as Cosmos.
The Baby Boom galaxy, which belongs to a class of evolution galaxies called starbursts, is the new record holder for the brightest starburst galaxy in the very distant universe, with brightness being a measure of its extreme starformation rate. PTI
BURST OF ACTIVITY: The green and red splotch is the most active star-making galaxy in the universe, nicknamed ‘Baby Boom’
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