Astronomers have discovered a distant galaxy to eat greedily gas in their vicinity, proving the theory that galaxies attract and devour stuff very close to them to grow and form stars, said on Thursday the European Southern Observatory (OES).
The observations made with the VLT OES ‘show the gas to fall toward the galaxy, which creates a stream that feeds star formation, while it drives the rotation of the galaxy, “he explains in statement Observatory, an organization of which Portugal is a member country.
According to the note of OES, “This is the best direct observational evidence so far that supports the theory that galaxies attract and material near devour in order to grow and form stars. “
The results of the discovery will be published in Friday’s issue of Science.
The VLT was used to study “a very rare alignment ‘from a distant galaxy and a quasar further apart. The quasar is defined as “the center of an extremely bright galaxy powered by a black hole high mass.”
The radiation emitted by the quasar passes through matter surrounding the galaxy before reaching Earth , which, according to the OES, “lets you explore in detail the properties of this material.”“Without the light from the quasar to act as a magnifying glass, would not have been possible to detect this gas surrounding ‘ marks the Observatory.
As you form new stars, galaxies quickly deplete your gas tank, so the note stresses the OES ‘must, somehow, be replenished continuously with new gas in order to continue to produce stars. “
Astronomers suspected that” the answer to this problem ‘was the amount of cold gas that “lies on the outskirts of galaxies, due to their gravitational attraction» . In this scenario, said the Observatory, the galaxy “draws gas, which circulates around them, running with galaxy before falling to the inside.”
Michael Murphy, a researcher at the University of Technology Swinburne, in Melbourne, Australia, notes that “the properties of the enormous volume of gas surrounding exactly are ‘the team expected to find that the cold gas was being drawn across the galaxy.” This galaxy, in particular, has a ravenous appetite and we found out how it is to feed in order to grow so quickly, “he concludes.
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