ALMA discovers rotating infant galaxy with help of natural cosmic telescope

Seldom Bucket

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Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers found a rotating baby galaxy 1/100th the size of the Milky Way at a time when the universe was only 7 percent of its present age. Thanks to assistance by the gravitational lens effect, the team was able to explore for the first time the nature of small and dark "normal galaxies" in the early universe, representative of the main population of the first galaxies, which greatly advances our understanding of the initial phase of galaxy evolution.


"Many of the galaxies that existed in the early universe were so small that their brightness is well below the limit of the current largest telescopes on Earth and in Space, making difficult to study their properties and internal structure," says Nicolas Laporte, a Kavli Senior Fellow at the University of Cambridge. "However, the light coming from the galaxy named RXCJ0600-z6, was highly magnified by gravitational lensing, making it an ideal target for studying the properties and structure of a typical baby galaxies."

 
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