Astronomers Using ALMA Spot Monstrous Baby Galaxies In Dark Matter Filaments

Astronomers Using ALMA Spot Monstrous Baby Galaxies In Dark Matter Filaments
By: Carlo Diokno |
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December 5, 2015 @ 2:21 PM

Using the facilities at ALMA Observatory in Northern Chile, astronomers have found monstrous baby galaxies located around 11.5 billion light-years from Earth.

American theoretical physicist and Harvard University Department of Physics professor Lisa Randall, author of the new book “Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe”, says dark matter protects galaxies from radiation.

Without the poorly understood invisible material, “radiation would have washed away galaxies,” she said.

In a Big Think presentation (see the video below this article), Professor Randall says the abundant nonluminous material was essential to the creation of structures we see in the Universe today. Even without dark matter, structures including the Earth, the Sun and other stars and planets would have formed. But Professor Randall points out that “the actual size of the galaxies we see is only possible because dark matter was present.”

About ten billion years before the formation of the Solar System, apparently including the Earth, many areas in the Universe were inhabited by monstrous galaxies that make hundreds or thousand of times more stars than what we observe today in the Milky Way. In the modern Universe, there aren’t any monstrous galaxies left, but some astronomers believe that these monstrous structures have matured into giant elliptical galaxies.

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http://stgist.com/2015/12/astronomers-using-alma-spot-baby-galaxies-in-dark-matter-filaments-5947