Cosmic Necklace Reveals Secrets of Galaxy Birth ⚡ экспресс
Astronomers peered into the distant past and saw how a giant galaxy is born. At its center, gas streams ejected during collisions tear into clumps, like beads on a string. This discovery shows that the largest galaxies in the universe could have assembled quickly and violently. What else will these cosmic 'beads' tell us?
Three giant galaxies collide, and from the impact, gas flies away. But it does not disappear without a trace — it compresses into clumps resembling beads of a cosmic necklace, strung on an invisible thread spanning thousands of light-years. The light from these beads comes from atoms of carbon heated by shock waves — like the air in front of a supersonic jet, only on a galactic scale.
It's amazing that the gas remains colder than ice on Earth (minus 243°C), but glows due to intense heating from the collision. In this necklace, stars are born at a furious rate: thousands of new suns appear each year, while our Milky Way creates just a couple. Spectroscopy — breaking light into colors — allows us to peer into these processes, and observations are conducted at wavelengths where cold cosmic dust and gas shine.
Such a cataclysm is not chaos, but construction: from these beads, giant elliptical galaxies later form, the most massive in the Universe.
🎯 The gas 'beads' are heated only to -243°C — 20 degrees colder than Pluto's surface. But thanks to shock waves, they glow so brightly that they can be detected at a distance of billions of light-years.