Looking Back in Time to See Stars Bursting Into Life

摘要

A UK-led international team of astronomers have presented the first conclusive evidence for a dramatic surge in star birth in a newly discovered population of massive galaxies in the early Universe. Their measurements confirm the idea that stars formed most rapidly about 11 billion years ago, or about three billion years after the Big Bang, and that the rate of star formation is much faster than was thought. The scientists used the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory, an infrared telescope with a mirror 3,5 m in diameter, launched in 2009. They studied the distant objects in detail with the Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE) camera, obtaining solid evidence that the galaxies are forming stars at a tremendous rate and ha/e large reservoirs of gas that will power the star formation for hundreds of millions of years.