{"id":22531,"date":"2020-08-12T11:00:54","date_gmt":"2020-08-12T15:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=22531"},"modified":"2020-08-11T23:38:38","modified_gmt":"2020-08-12T03:38:38","slug":"eso-very-early-galaxy-looks-surprisingly-like-our-milky-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=22531","title":{"rendered":"ESO: Very early galaxy looks surprisingly like our Milky Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new report from the European Southern Observatory (ESO<\/a>):<\/p>\n

ALMA sees most distant Milky Way look-alike<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Astronomers using ALMA, in which the ESO is a partner, have revealed an extremely distant galaxy that looks surprisingly like our Milky Way. The galaxy, SPT0418-47, is gravitationally lensed by a nearby galaxy, appearing in the sky as a near-perfect ring of light. The research team reconstructed the distant galaxy\u2019s true shape, shown here, and the motion of its gas from the ALMA data using a new computer modelling technique.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis result represents a breakthrough in the field of galaxy formation, showing that the structures that we observe in nearby spiral galaxies and in our Milky Way were already in place 12 billion years ago,\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

says Francesca Rizzo, PhD student from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, who led the research published today in Nature. While the galaxy the astronomers studied, called SPT0418-47, doesn\u2019t appear to have spiral arms, it has at least two features typical of our Milky Way: a rotating disc and a bulge<\/a>, the large group of stars packed tightly around the galactic centre.<\/p>\n