Los
Angeles Times: A recently discovered starburst galaxy has
led astronomers to rethink how soon such galaxies could have
first started forming after the Big Bang. It had been assumed
that starburst galaxies, which crank out hundreds of stars per
year, would have taken several billion years to accumulate
enough matter. Recently, however, Dominik Riechers of Cornell
University and colleagues
detected
one that looked redder than the others, meaning its light
had traveled a very long distance. Dubbed HFLS 3, the newly
discovered galaxy was formed some 880 million years after the
Big Bang and is the oldest one of its kind seen so far. It also
creates stars at a much higher rate than any previously
observed starburst galaxyâmdash;about 2900 per
year. The discovery, along with that of a nearby node of dark
matter that is large enough to grow another galaxy cluster,
could provide insight into "how these large-scale structures
may have formed early in the universe's history," writes Amina
Khan for the
Los Angeles Times.
