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 05 July 2008 03:58 BST

Scientists 'discover new galaxy'

Wednesday, 05 Jul 2006 16:50
Scientists 'discover new galaxy'

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Scientists believe that they may have discovered the early stages of a galaxy formation.

An international team of astronomers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) have used the very large telescope (VLT) to discover a large primordial 'blob' more than ten billion light years away.

Other similar blobs have been discovered over the last few years, although their exact nature is still unclear. However it is thought that the new blob discovery is likely to be a galaxy forming due to its level of hydrogen emission.

"We have tried to explain this blob using the most common explanations, such as the illumination by a galaxy with an active nucleus or a galaxy that produce stars at a frantic rate, but none of them apply," said Kim Nilsson from the ESO, first author of the paper relating the result.

"Instead, we are led to the conclusion that the observed hydrogen emission comes from primordial gas falling onto a clump of dark matter. We could thus be literally seeing the building up of a massive galaxy, like our own, the Milky Way."

The blob is located at 11.6 billion light-years away, meaning that what the ESO scientists have studied is as it was when the universe was two billion years old, or less than 15 per cent of its present age.

With a diameter of 200,000 light years, the blob is twice as big as our Milky Way and the total energy emitted is equivalent to that of roughly two billion suns.End of story


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