In an effort to look back on the ancient history of the universe, astronomers believe they have found clues as to how galaxy clusters form.
According to ABC News, European Space Agency (ESA) used the Planck Telescope to search for any lingering radiation caused by the Big Bang. Using that to develop a galactic map, the researchers used the Herschel Telescope to get a better look at the galaxy clusters they found.
"Because we are looking so far back in time, and because the universe is assumed to be homogenous in all directions, we think it's very similar to looking at the equivalent of what a baby cluster might look like," project scientist Brenda L. Frye, an assistant astronomer at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, said in a press release. "In contrast to previous observations, for which the odd one or two baby clusters was found which one would put in a zoo, we now have found a real sample of 200 baby clusters."
A study on these findings was published Tuesday in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
"It was not known whether young galaxies form stars gradually, like marathon runners pacing themselves, or in bursts," Frye said. "It turns out these young galaxies were not forming slowly, but in a dramatic way. Lighting up with star formation, they appear like fireworks going off in the sky. It's like sprinting the first mile of a 26-mile marathon, and then walking the rest of the way."
The ESA says the Milky Way Galaxy produces one star equal or greater in mass to the one in our own solar system per year. In the period of time the study authors caught a glimpse into, there were more than a thousand new solar masses per year.
"Hints of these kinds of objects had been found earlier in data from Herschel and other telescopes, but the all-sky capability of Planck revealed many more candidates for us to study," study lead author Hervé Dole, of the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale in Orsay, France, said in the release. "We still have a lot to learn about this new population, requiring further follow-up studies with other observatories. But we believe that they are a missing piece of cosmological structure formation."
