10.7 Billion Year-Old Spiral Galaxy Stuns Astronomers

Hevva

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Aug 2, 2011
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10.7 Billion Year-Old Spiral Galaxy Stuns Astronomers



BX442 is so old that it shouldn't really be a spiral galaxy at all.

Over the past 22 years, the venerable Hubble space telescope has shown humanity a great many wonders from the distant past of our galaxy and universe. Now, continuing its mission to find the oldest and weirdest bodies in the universe, Hubble has pointed astronomers towards an odd spiral galaxy that looks to be around 10.7 billion years old. While spiral galaxies are by no means uncommon in the modern universe, this ancient spiral, named BX442, is the first of its kind to be seen so far back in spacetime.

Spotted by Hubble and refined by the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, the elegantly-named BX442 perplexed astronomers when Hubble first picked it up. Being as old as it is, the galaxy shouldn't have such a refined spiral shape; if we're right about the Big Bang, the universe should've been too much of a hot mess back then to allow anything so pretty and defined to form. So what's up with BX442?

A team of researchers, writing in Nature, think they may have found the answer. According to David Law of the University of Toronto's Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, a lead author in the study, the explanation for BX442's weird shape lies in some quiet assistance from a small friend. In this case, that friend is a small dwarf galaxy floating around the outskirts of the spiral.

"You can get a little extra help if you've got a satellite galaxy orbiting around," said Law. "It gives that extra little gravitational kick to help accentuate the strength of the arm and make it into one of those eye-popping examples like the Whirlpool galaxy that you see all the pictures of."

"What we've learned when we look at galaxies at that epoch is that they're very dynamically hot," continued Law. "Even though we see some discs existing at that time, they're very thick and puffy, whereas the Milky Way has an... amount of random motion only about a tenth or so the amount of ordered rotation, giving rise to a very thin disc."

As the authors point out, BX442's spiral arms may have been a transient feature, a cosmological accident of sorts; further investigation into ancient galaxies should yield further clues. Armed with proof that spiral galaxies of this kind did indeed exist during the universe's relative infancy, Law and his colleagues are off to point Hubble at some more regions they suspect of harboring ancient galaxies. Is BX442 the only super-ancient spiral galaxy out there, or is its formation not as unique as it first appears?


Source: BBC [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v487/n7407/full/nature11256.html]

Image (Artist's Impression): Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics/Joe Bergeron [http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/AliceShapleyspiralgalaxyart.jpg]


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Skeleon

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Nov 2, 2007
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Very interesting. While such formations are probably rare, there are pretty much bound to be other at least somewhat similar formations out there.
Funny, by the way, isn't it: We speak of a "small dwarf galaxy", yet we have to consider that it's still incredibly, unimaginably large in comparison to anything we know and experience first-hand. Everything's relative.

EDIT not worth a new post:
Brad Shepard said:
Science: Getting proven wrong every week.
Sounds like you stopped reading halfway through the article.
 

Scars Unseen

^ ^ v v < > < > B A
May 7, 2009
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Alternative headline: Astronomers Discover Dwarf Tossing to be Older Tradition Than Previously Suspected
 

Pinkamena

Stuck in a vortex of sexy horses
Jun 27, 2011
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Interesting. I wonder when Hubble will get retired, it's been up there for quite a while now.
 

The_Darkness

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Genuine Evil said:
I always found it sad that the pictures we get from Hubble are actually black and white and that all the beautiful colors we see are just Astronomers messing around in Photoshop
Well yes, and then again, no. It's more likely that the pictures are 'False Colour' pictures, in which (for example) blue represents x-rays, green is gamma rays and red is infrared. I mean, yes, sometimes Scientists go and and colour stuff in for no other reason than to get interest from the public, but sometimes we are actually being productive :)
 

stoddapb

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Mar 23, 2011
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draythefingerless said:
Pinkamena said:
Interesting. I wonder when Hubble will get retired, it's been up there for quite a while now.
They upgraded it quite a bit since its launch. theyll probably keep doing that.
The successor to Hubble is planned to go up around 2018. It's called the James Webb Space Telescope and looks... interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope
 

WaysideMaze

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Apr 25, 2010
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I didn't actually realise that galaxies could orbit other galaxies. It's interesting to see that as you scale up, things stay shockingly similar.
 

Quaxar

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stoddapb said:
draythefingerless said:
Pinkamena said:
Interesting. I wonder when Hubble will get retired, it's been up there for quite a while now.
They upgraded it quite a bit since its launch. theyll probably keep doing that.
The successor to Hubble is planned to go up around 2018. It's called the James Webb Space Telescope and looks... interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope
it's a Star Destroyer with a satellite dish!
 

DancePuppets

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Nov 9, 2009
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WaysideMaze said:
I didn't actually realise that galaxies could orbit other galaxies. It's interesting to see that as you scale up, things stay shockingly similar.
There's 2 "proper" galaxies and a load of dwarf ones orbiting the Milky Way too, it's pretty cool.

Also in response to the anti science person:

Science: Finding new and exciting things every week while presenting testable hypotheses as to how they got there.
 

PotluckBrigand

No family dinner is safe.
Jul 30, 2008
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draythefingerless said:
Brad Shepard said:
Science: Getting proven wrong every week.
Well if it didnt get proven wrong, it wouldnt be science would it?
Yeah that's kind of the point of science, really. It's not really first come, first served... I like when we learn things that are contrary to things we already thought we knew. Nice reminder just how much there is left to learn.
 

Buizel91

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Aug 25, 2008
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PotluckBrigand said:
draythefingerless said:
Brad Shepard said:
Science: Getting proven wrong every week.
Well if it didnt get proven wrong, it wouldnt be science would it?
Yeah that's kind of the point of science, really. It's not really first come, first served... I like when we learn things that are contrary to things we already thought we knew. Nice reminder just how much there is left to learn.
Yup, there are many who believe we will never be able to travel at lightspeed...

Give it 10 years ;D
 

cerebus23

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May 16, 2010
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GoddyofAus said:
Brad Shepard said:
Science: Getting proven wrong every week.
Religion: Proving itself wrong every minute of everyday.
LULZ lest it is not as bad on here as utube, cannot watch a science video with religious trolls invading to tell how foolish and lost we all are sigh......