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    galaxy formation tagged posts

    New Insights on How Galaxies are Formed

    March 4, 2024, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    An image from the simulation
    Part of the simulated universe. In the center, a galaxy is born through gas that later transforms into stars. The whole process takes billions of years but is simulated in just a few months by supercomputers (Photo: The AGORA Collaboration)

    New insights on how galaxies are formed
    Astronomers can use supercomputers to simulate the formation of galaxies from the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago to the present day. But there are a number of sources of error. An international research team, led by researchers in Lund, has spent a hundred million computer hours over eight years trying to correct these.

    The last decade has seen major advances in computer simulations that can realistically calculate how galaxies form...

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    Scientists Map Gusty Winds in a far-off Neutron Star System

    April 12, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    In black space, the accretion disk is represented as a flat swirling disk with blue, pink red colors, and in the middle of it is tiny, glowing white sphere, the neutron star. Behind the accretion disk is a large teal sphere, the sun-like star. A teal noodle flows from the star to the accretion disk, representing the material drawn away from the star.
    Caption: MIT astronomers mapped the “disk winds” associated with the accretion disk around Hercules X-1, a system in which a neutron star is drawing material away from a sun-like star, represented as the teal sphere. The findings may offer clues to how supermassive black holes shape entire galaxies.
    Credits:Credit: Jose-Luis Olivares, MIT. Based on an image of Hercules X-1 by D. Klochkov, European Space Agency

    The 2D map of this ‘disk wind’ may reveal clues to galaxy formation.

    Astronomers have mapped the ‘disk winds’ associated with the accretion disk around Hercules X-1, a system in which a neutron star is drawing material away from a sun-like star. The findings may offer clues to how supermassive black holes shape entire galaxies.

    An accretion disk is a colossal whirlpool o...

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    Hubble Spots Double Quasars in Merging Galaxies

    April 7, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This artist’s conception shows the brilliant light of two quasars residing in the cores of two galaxies that are in the chaotic process of merging. The gravitational tug-of-war between the two galaxies stretches them, forming long tidal tails and igniting a firestorm of starbirth. Quasars are brilliant beacons of intense light from the centers of distant galaxies. They are powered by supermassive black holes voraciously feeding on infalling matter. This feeding frenzy unleashes a torrent of radiation that can outshine the collective light of billions of stars in the host galaxy. In a few tens of millions of years, the black holes and their galaxies will merge, and so will the quasar pair, forming an even more massive black hole...
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    Extremely Young Galaxy is Milky Way Look-Alike

    August 14, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

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    Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner, have revealed an extremely distant and therefore very young galaxy that looks surprisingly like our Milky Way. The galaxy is so far away its light has taken more than 12 billion years to reach us: we see it as it was when the Universe was just 1.4 billion years old. It is also surprisingly unchaotic, contradicting theories that all galaxies in the early Universe were turbulent and unstable. This unexpected discovery challenges our understanding of how galaxies form, giving new insights into the past of our Universe.

    Galaxy is distorted, appearing as a ring of light in the sky...

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