James Webb has discovered a distant young galaxy: it is devouring its neighbors

Today, February 12, scientists from NASA announced a very interesting discovery that allows us to better understand how the Milky Way galaxy developed and how the cosmos in general works. The fact is that the James Webb telescope, while observing the dwarf and extremely young Sparkler galaxy, discovered that it gradually feeds on clusters of stars, gradually expanding its area. This unique observation of its kind allowed the astronauts to better understand what the ancient galaxies were like at the beginning of their journey and exactly how they gradually expanded, changing shape and taking up more and more space in the vast Universe.

The Galaxy “Sparkler” (Sparkler or “Bengal fire” in English), located in the southern constellation “Volans” (Volans), got its name because a huge cluster of groups of ancient stars was discovered around it – in total at the moment there are about two dozen globular radiant clusters. Each of these clusters may contain up to a million active stars, but so far, with the current level of technology, it will not be possible to say for sure. For example, in the Milky Way galaxy, there are about 200 own globular clusters, that is, ten times more than in a young galaxy.

And scientists, studying the compact star clusters surrounding the galaxy, came to the conclusion that they look exactly the same as the young versions of star clusters around the “Milky Way”. These clusters are rich in metals, like globular clusters in the central part of our galaxy. Based on this, experts said that Sparkler is at the beginning of its journey and will gradually increase its mass due to clusters of stars next to it.

“We seem to be seeing first-hand the formation of this galaxy as it builds up its mass—in the form of a dwarf galaxy and several globular clusters. We are thrilled by this unique opportunity to study both the formation of globular clusters and the early version of the Milky Way at a time when the universe was only 1/3 of its current age,” the researchers officially told Forbes.

At the moment, the young galaxy boasts a mass of only 3% of our home galaxy, but the researchers believe that it will grow extremely rapidly by devouring neighboring star clusters, gaining mass and scale. And in the end, it can be equal to the mass of the Milky Way, although this will happen, of course, in billions of years, so we will not be able to know about the final result.

Source: Trash Box

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