Something fascinating happened 12.8 billion years ago in the universe in the earliest stages of its life. Astronomers have spotted a pair of galaxies in the act of merging, and current observations point towards the creation of a monster galaxy, according to a report in Science Daily.
Monster galaxies are extremely bright. Scientists say that the discovery will help us understand more about the birth and evolution of galaxies and black holes in the early universe.
The discovery was made when researchers looked at the earliest galaxies in the universe to learn more about quasars and their formation. Quasars are bright objects that form when matter falls into a supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy in the early Universe. As per theory, matter falls into the black hole when galaxies merge.
According to studies, when two galaxies rich in gases merge to form a single larger galaxy, the gravitational interaction causes gas to fall towards the supermassive black hole. This can happen with either one or both of the galaxies, triggering a quasar activity.
To learn more about quasars, a team of international researchers led by Takuma Izumi used the ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) radio telescope and pointed it at the earliest known pair of close quasars.
These two quasars were discovered by Yoshiki Matsuoka, at Ehime University in Japan, using the Subaru Telescope.
Birth of a monster galaxy
Located towards the constellation Virgo, the quasars existed during the first 900 million years of the universe. They are not as bright, which means they are still in the early stages of formation.
The researchers looked at the host galaxies of the two quasars and this is where they noticed a link between the two. The ALMA observations showed the existence of a “bridge” of gas and dust between the two galaxies. This led them to conclude that the galaxies are merging.
This merger is expected to lead to more vigorous quasar activity, making it extremely bright, and also trigger a rapid increase in star formation.
The ALMA observations measured the amount of gas in both the galaxies and found that they are extremely rich in gas. This is why quasar activity will witness an extreme high, besides creating millions of stars, also known as a “starburst.”
A super-bright object will be created in the process in the early Universe known as a monster galaxy.