To come into being, galaxies require cold gas to undergo gravitational collapse. The larger the galaxy, the more cold gas it needs to coalesce and to grow.
To come into being, galaxies require cold gas to undergo gravitational collapse. The larger the galaxy, the more cold gas it needs to coalesce and to grow.
Massive galaxies found in the early universe needed a lot—a store of cold molecular gases totaling as much as 100 billion times the mass of our sun.
But where did these early, super-sized galaxies get that much cold gas when they were hemmed in by hotter surroundings?
In a new study, astronomers led by the University of Iowa report direct, observational evidence of streams of cold gas they believe provisioned these early, massive galaxies. They detected cold gas pipelines that knifed through the hot atmosphere in the dark matter halo of an early massive galaxy, supplying the materials for the galaxy to form stars.
Read More: University of Iowa
Researchers led by the University of Iowa have produced direct observational evidence that massive galaxies in the early universe were fed by cold gas pipelines that survived despite hotter surroundings and allowed these galaxies to form stars. (Photo Credit: Hai Fu, University of Iowa)
