Astronomers have discovered a luminous (representational) galaxy
Leiden:
Astronomers have discovered a luminous galaxy caught reionizing its surrounding gas only 800 million years after the Big Bang.
The research, led by Romain Meyer, doctoral student at UCL in London, UK, was presented at the virtual annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society (EAS).
Studying the first galaxies that formed 13 billion years ago is essential to understanding our cosmic origins. One of the hot topics of extragalactic astronomy today is “cosmic reionization”, the process in which the intergalactic gas was ionized (atoms stripped of their electrons).
Cosmic reionization is similar to unsolved murder: we have clear evidence, but who did it, how and when? We now have strong evidence that the reionization of hydrogen was completed approximately 13 billion years ago, in the first billion years of the universe, with bubbles of ionized gas that develop slowly and overlap.
Objects capable of creating such bubbles of ionized hydrogen have however remained mysterious until now: the discovery of a light galaxy in which 60 to 100% of ionizing photons escape, is probably responsible for the ionization of its local bubble. This suggests that the matter is closer to being resolved.
(This story has not been edited by GalacticGaming staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
