Astronomers Spy a Milky Way-like Galaxy In the Very Early Universe (sciencemag.org) 18
Slashdot reader sciencehabit quotes Science magazine: Astronomers imagine the early universe as a wild and lawless place, with chaotic fledgling galaxies full of swirling gases and frantic star formation. So an image released today comes as a surprise: a young galaxy, spied when the universe was just 10% of its current age, that looks remarkably like our calm and well-ordered Milky Way...
Astronomers used computer modeling to reconstruct what the galaxy, SPT0418-47, really looks like. Reporting today in Nature, they reveal it has a rotating disk and a bulge around its center just like the Milky Way. Such features were thought to form much later in galactic evolution. This and similar discoveries are pushing astronomers to look again at how galaxies can have evolved to an apparently mature stage in such a short time.
Astronomers used computer modeling to reconstruct what the galaxy, SPT0418-47, really looks like. Reporting today in Nature, they reveal it has a rotating disk and a bulge around its center just like the Milky Way. Such features were thought to form much later in galactic evolution. This and similar discoveries are pushing astronomers to look again at how galaxies can have evolved to an apparently mature stage in such a short time.
Easy answer (Score:2)
They were engineered.
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How can this be? (Score:3)
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True, Milky way, per my understanding is not a rotating disk, but a two or four armed armed galaxy with a dense central area.
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Actually, the Milky Way is a lot of crap swirling a drain.
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Actually, the Milky Way is a lot of crap swirling a drain.
That explains a lot about the current state of this world...
Drake equation (Score:2)
Wonder how this affects the Drake equation.
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It causes a divide by zero error.
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Probably not a lot. It would have been a very low metalocity galaxy so not a lot of potential for life *as we know it*. Its just hard to sustain complex chemistry with a truncated periodic table. And if life had found a way, its not likely any potential civilizations had survived until now.
Which James Bond movie was in it? (Score:1)
Can someone please tell me which James Bond movie this was in?
Thanks.
That was news FOUR DAYS AGO. (Score:1)
Old news for Nerds, stuff that used to matter.
Skeptical ... it's from a _model_ (Score:2)
IANAA but:
1) are models of lensing 100% correct? (no)
2) are models of galaxies 100% correct? (no. remember dark matter, etc)
So an imperfect model of a galaxy is used in an imperfect model of lensing and arrives at an unexpected result. Not sure how this is news worthy of Nature. We just have to believe, to have faith in science.