Discovery of monster starburst galaxies at the edge of time. Mmmmm starbursts
NEW DELHI: ALMA has arrived with a bang! Scientists at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an observatory located in one of the coldest, driest places on earth, have found a monster starburst galaxy with the brightness of 40 trillion Suns. It is located at an unimaginable distance - light seen by ALMA started from the galaxy some 12.7 billion years ago when the Universe was just a billion years old. Scientists found that it was giving birth to new stars at a mind boggling rate of 1000 every year. Our galaxy, the Milky Way gives birth to one star every year.
Actually ALMA found a whole zoo of galaxies, some 18 of them, all of them from the early turbulent period of the Universe when it was one to three billion years old. Usually, star formation from gigantic swirling clouds of dust does not take place at such a furious pace as in these ancient galaxies.
The research is the most recent example of the discoveries coming from the new international ALMA observatory, which celebrates its inauguration today. The international team of researchers first discovered these distant starburst galaxies with the National Science Foundation's 10-meter South Pole Telescope. Though dim in visible light, they were glowing brightly in millimeter wavelength light, a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that the new ALMA telescope was designed to explore.
Using only 16 of ALMA's eventual full complement of 66 antennas, the researchers were able to precisely determine the distance to 18 of these galaxies, revealing that they were among the most distant starburst galaxies ever detected. These results were surprising because very few similar galaxies had previously been discovered at similar distances, and it wasn't clear how galaxies that early in the history of the Universe could produce stars at such a prodigious rate.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/ALMA-arrives-with-discovery-of-monster-starburst-galaxies-at-the-edge-of-time/articleshow/18970998.cms
