Six massive dead galaxies discovered by NASA's Hubble

World

Published: 2021-09-27 13:47

Last Updated: 2024-03-28 04:17


Six massive dead galaxies discovered by NASA's Hubble
Six massive dead galaxies discovered by NASA's Hubble

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter Observatory found six massive, early galaxies that are now dead as they had run out of cold hydrogen gas which is necessary to form stars.

The cause of these galaxies' rapid death is still unknown to scientists, especially the reason for the disappearance of cold hydrogen.

“At this point in our universe, all galaxies should be forming lots of stars. It's the peak epoch of star formation,” explained lead author of the study and assistant professor of astronomy, Kate Whitaker.

“So what happened to all the cold gas in these galaxies so early on?” Whitaker questioned.

Whitaker proposed several possible explanations as to why the formation of stars in these galaxies stopped so early on.

“Did a supermassive black hole in the galaxy's center turn on and heat up all the gas? If so, the gas could still be there, but now it's hot. Or it could have been expelled and now it's being prevented from accreting back onto the galaxy. Or did the galaxy just use it all up, and the supply is cut off? These are some of the open questions that we'll continue to explore with new observations down the road,” Whitaker explained.

According to reports, these “extraordinarily dead” galaxies date back to 3 billion years after the Big Bang.