A massive rotating disk found in the early universe

Nicknamed the Wolfe Disk, the galaxy spinning at 170 miles (272 kilometers) per second, similar to our Milky Way.

BY
AMIT MALEWAR
MAY 21, 2020



Artist impression of the Wolfe Disk, a massive rotating disk galaxy in the early, dusty universe. The galaxy was initially discovered when ALMA examined the light from a more distant quasar (top left). Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. Dagnello


Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) discovered a massive rotating disk galaxy when the universe was only ten percent of its current age, challenges the traditional models of galaxy formation.

Dubbed as DLA0817g, the galaxy is the most distant rotating disk galaxy ever observed. The unparalleled intensity of ALMA made it conceivable to see this galaxy spinning at 170 miles (272 kilometers) per second, like our Milky Way.

Lead author Marcel Neeleman of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany said, “While previous studies hinted at the existence of these early rotating gas-rich disk galaxies, thanks to ALMA we now have unambiguous evidence that they occur as early as 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang.”

“The discovery of the Wolfe Disk provides a challenge for many galaxy formation simulations, which predict that massive galaxies at this point in the evolution of the cosmos grew through many mergers of smaller galaxies and hot clumps of gas.”

More:
https://www.techexplorist.com/massive-rotating-disk-found-early-universe/32400/