Astronomers found a galaxy in the throes of death – and they know what’s killing it
Powerful galaxy winds that blast gas into space may be a common killer of massive galaxies in the early universe. Joshua Worth , CC BY At the start of cosmic history, galaxies were big clouds of gas, and they grew by turning that gas into stars. If a galaxy runs out of gas, it will stop forming stars and die. Present-day galaxies have had more than 10 billion years to grow old and die. But this is not true in the early universe: we expect to see very few dead galaxies in the
Astronomers have identified a massive galaxy in the early universe that is rapidly losing its gas, a process that leads to the cessation of star formation and effectively kills the galaxy. This observation, made possible by the James Webb Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, suggests that powerful "galaxy winds" are responsible for this gas expulsion. These winds, driven by supermassive black holes, are now considered a primary suspect in the premature death of large galaxies in the early cosmos.
This finding offers a potential explanation for the unexpected abundance of dead galaxies observed in the early universe, challenging previous cosmological models.
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