Galaxies

An illustration of a magnetic field generated by a supermassive black hole in the early universe, showing turbulent plasma outflows that help turn nearby gas clouds into stars. New findings suggest this process might be responsible for accelerated star formation in the first 50 million years of the universe. Credit: Roberto Molar Candanosa/Johns Hopkins University Which came first: Black holes or galaxies? Findings ‘completely shake up’ what we know about galaxy formation.Black holes not only existed at the dawn of time,…

A computer simulation of what the gas and stars in a galaxy cluster look like, highlighting how clusters of galaxies are embedded in cosmic web of filaments. In the color images, the intensity and color of the image represent the density and temperature of the gas. These figures show successive zooms onto a galaxy embedded in a filament. Going counterclockwise from the top right, the scale bars represent lengths of 3.3 million light years, 3.3 million light years, 330 thousand light years, 33 thousand light years. The…

Ever since it opened its giant infrared eye on the cosmos after its December 2021 launch, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has found a shocking surfeit of bright galaxies that stretch back to the very early universe. Their brightness—a proxy for their numbers of stars and hence their mass—is deeply puzzling because galaxies shouldn’t have had enough time to become so bulky in such early cosmic epochs. Imagine visiting a foreign land and finding that many of its toddlers weighed as much as teenagers. You might have…

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has observed 12 interacting galaxies, revealing long tidal tails rich in gas, dust, and stars, along which 425 clusters of newborn stars have been identified. These clusters, containing up to 1 million blue, newborn stars each, are a result of galaxy collisions that trigger star formation rather than destruction. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, Jayanne English (University of Manitoba)Long Trail of Clumpy Stars Follows Galaxy InteractionsWhen galaxies go bump in the night, they cook up new…

This collection of 19 face-on spiral galaxies from the James Webb Space Telescope in near- and mid-infrared light is at once overwhelming and awe-inspiring. “Webb’s new images are extraordinary,” said Janice Lee, a project scientist for strategic initiatives at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. “They’re mind-blowing even for researchers who have studied these same galaxies for decades. Bubbles and filaments are resolved down to the smallest scales ever observed, and tell a story about the star…

By Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe February 5, 2024A transformative study analyzed over one million galaxies to explore cosmic structure origins, revealing significant alignments in galaxy shapes over vast distances. This research, utilizing innovative methods and confirming aspects of inflation theory, marks a significant advancement in understanding the universe’s formation.A team of researchers has analyzed more than one million galaxies to explore the origin of the present-day cosmic…

Researchers measure dark matter speed by studying lopsided galaxies affected by dynamical friction caused by dark matter. This method helps in understanding the interactions between galaxies and dark matter, aiding theoretical physics and cosmology. Credit: SciTechDaily.comThe study of lopsided galaxies reveals how gravitational effects and dynamical friction can illuminate dark matter’s mysteries, advancing our understanding in cosmology.So how can the speed of dark matter be measured? The prerequisite is to find a…

A batch of newly released images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope show in remarkable detail 19 spiral galaxies residing relatively near our Milky Way, offering new clues on star formation as well as galactic structure and evolution.The images were made public on Monday by a team of scientists involved in a project called Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) that operates across several major astronomical observatories.The closest of the 19 galaxies is called NGC 5068, about 15 million…

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The James Webb space telescope has amassed what the ESA is calling a “treasure trove” of new images of spiral galaxies. While the images themselves are beautiful, Webb’s observations of these 19 galaxies have revealed unknown structures within them, leaving scientists scrambling to learn more.The images were taken using the near- and mid-infrared systems on the James Webb, and they have provided us with a ton of detail to look at. Not only do they showcase the dust, gas, and stars within the galaxy, but they…