A photo of the G237 protocluster showing its galaxies in various colors to represent different wavelengths of observations.
Astronomers discovered a huge "shipyard" in which galaxies can be built. It is similar to the one where our Milky Way was born.
This giant structure is called a protocluster and contains more than 60 galaxies. It is located 11 billion light years from Earth. Scientists are now observing a small part of the universe that is just 3 billion years old.
In January, researchers published a paper about the protocluster G237. However, its existence was confirmed by an international team astronomers who published their follow up findings in Astronomy & Astrophysics on October 26th.
Brenda Frye, an associate Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona, stated in a statement that galaxy protoclusters like G237 can be thought of as a shipyard in which massive galaxies have been assembled.
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Gravity pulls stars, other matter, together to create galaxies. These galaxies then have a tendency of grouping together to form clusters. Frye says scientists don't know much about protoclusters because they are too faint to detect with optical light.
G237 was first detected by researchers using the Planck telescope of the European Space Agency.
Scientists now confirm its existence using follow-up observations with the Large Binocular Telescope (Arizona) and the Subaru Telescope (Japan), as well as archive data, such as the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Herschel Space Observatory.
G237 was creating stars at an unsustainable and unrealistically high rate, according to early observations. Frye stated that each of the 63 galaxies found in G237 was a star factory operating at full speed. It's almost as if the galaxies were working overtime to make stars.
Hydrogen is used as a fuel to form stars. Astronomers were initially baffled by the fact that the protocluster did not appear to have enough hydrogen to fuel its rapid star formation.
Researchers discovered that some star production observations were not related to G237. After removing these observations, star production in the protocluster was still high. However, they believe protoclusters such as G237 can draw enough hydrogen from filaments (or threads of gaz that link galaxies) to form what's known as the cosmic web. Protoclusters will form where the filaments intersect. This would indicate that protoclusters such as G237 are able to produce enough hydrogen to create new stars at an alarming rate.
Frye stated, "The picture that we have now put together is that of a galaxy shipyard that works at high efficiency to assemble galactices and the stars inside them and has a more sustainable energy supply."
Original publication on Live Science
