Alma (eso / naub / luggage); B. Saxton (LABY / AUI / NSF)
14 Baby galaxies seen by the soul telescope
Extreme star formation source was “hidden” in a unnoticed set of small galaxies. Investigation raises doubts about mysterious – and essential molecular gas.
“SPT2349-56 is such an extraordinary system that we can have caught one of the most massive clusters in formation at a very brief and crucial phase ”. Thus describe the authors of the new published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters in March.
These astronomers identified a “cosmic fuel deposit“This is actually a” molecular gas in the SPT2349-56 Protocluster, significantly more than the previous measurement, “the team leader Dazhi Zhou told.
“AND unlikely that this gas comes from molecular clouds of galaxies individual. Instead, it seems to be a more diffuse reservoir that permeates this ultra-dense environment. ”This hot and diffuse gas can be the intra-cluster medium (ICM), which has been signed to fill cluster of mature galaxies.
The newly discovered reservoir can also provide a continuous supply of raw material for the star explosion-a period of intense star birth.
“This can explain how the proto-aglomerado galaxies maintain their intense star formation activity“The researcher added.” Our findings can also have important implications for understanding how massive galaxies have formed in galaxies swarms. “
This system is forming stars at a 10,000 -time rhythm than andromeda.
“To put this in a perspective, we couldn’t even find a single ULLIG in our Virgo local galaxies cluster,” said Zhou.
“What makes this even more intriguing is the fact that the ulirgs are typically formed through galaxies And your life times are usually very short, but we have not found clear signs of Ululg fusions in this proto-aglomerate system. This raises the question of how it is that such an extreme concentration of Ululgs can have been formed on SPT2349-56 ″.
The answer may be in this discovery. “Traditionally, Molecular gas is thought to be concentrated inside the galaxies. Outside the galaxies, gas is usually warmer and less dense, predominantly in atomic form, ”explains Zhou.“ So finding such a significant excess of molecular gas not clearly associated with individual galaxies was quite quite unexpected“.
“In later phases, violent mergers could erase the evidence of how it was formed. SPT2349-56 offers a rare opportunity to really understand how massive elliptical galaxies were formed in swarm centers,” he concludes.
