Oldest Known Galactic Get-Together Occurred Shortly After Big Bang

[Judi Lynn]

By Mindy Weisberger 9 hours ago



Artist's impression of the merging galaxies, together forming the object B14-65666, located 13 billion light-years away.(Image: © National Astronomical Observatory of Japan)

Signals written in elements from the early universe have revealed the oldest known merger between two galaxies, taking place less than a billion years after the Big Bang.

Researchers recently turned to the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile to look for radio emissions from a distant but very bright star-forming galaxy known as B14-65666, located about 13 billion light-years from Earth. Prior observations in the ultraviolet spectrum by the Hubble Space Telescope hinted that the galaxy contained two "clumps" of stars, the northeastern "Clump A" and the southwestern "Clump B."

New observations using ALMA, a highly sensitive radio telescope, identified three distinctive signatures in each of the two clumps: those from carbon, oxygen and dust. (The three sources all produce distinctive signals in radio waves.) Such signals have never been found in a galaxy this old; variations between those signals told the scientists that B14-65666's dual clusters represented two galaxies that had merged before the universe was even a billion years old, the researchers reported in a new study. [15 Unforgettable Images of Stars]

Located in Chile's Atacama Desert, ALMA uses 66 ground-based antennas to detect some of the universe's coldest and most distant objects, scanning the skies with an "eye" that is 10 times sharper than Hubble's, according to the European Space Agency.

More:
https://www.space.com/oldest-merger-galaxies.html

[Vinnie From Indy]

1. nice picts

thanks

[Judi Lynn]

2. Thank you for taking the time to post. There are so many more at google images, too.

Placed in the Atacama Desert in Chile, the driest place on earth. Perpetually astonished by this installation.