Figure 1: Example of a galaxy merger Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration and A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University)
The majority of stars have been believed to lie on a “main sequence,” where the larger a galaxy’s mass, the higher its efficiency to form new stars. However, every now and then a galaxy will display a burst of newly-formed stars that shine brighter than the rest. A collision between 2 large galaxies is usually the cause of such starburst phases, where the cold gas residing in the giant molecular clouds becomes the fuel for sustaining such high rates of star formation.
The question astronomers have been asking is whether such starbursts in the early universe were the result of having an overa...
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