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posted by martyb on Wednesday August 31 2016, @10:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the dark-mater-required dept.

The Chandra X-Ray observatory in concert with the ESO's UltraVISTA infrared telescope and the ALMA radio telescope have discovered the most distant galaxy cluster yet, designated CL J1001+0220. The galaxy cluster is 11.1 billion light years from Earth, and we may be seeing it just as it is forming. A paper describing these results is available. The extremely remote cluster is remarkable not only for its distance:

In addition to its extraordinary distance, CL J1001 is remarkable because of its high levels of star formation in galaxies near the center of the cluster. Within about 250,000 light years of the center of the cluster (its core), eleven massive galaxies are found and nine of those display high rates of formation. Specifically, stars are forming in the cluster core at a rate equivalent to about 3,400 Suns per year.

The large amount of growth through star formation in the galaxies in CL J1001 distinguishes it from other galaxy clusters found at distances of about 10 billion light years and closer, where little growth is occurring. These results suggest that elliptical galaxies in clusters may form their stars through more violent and shorter bursts of star formation than elliptical galaxies outside clusters.

The latest study shows that CL 1001 galaxy cluster may be undergoing a transformation from a galaxy cluster that is still forming, known as a "protocluster," to a mature one. Astronomers have never found a galaxy cluster at this precise stage. These results may also imply that star formation slows down in large galaxies within clusters after the galaxies have already come together during the development of a galaxy cluster.

[Continues...]

Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel remarks that this latest finding validates the current cosmological theory of a dark matter universe:

The most exciting part, from a cosmology point of view, is that the first true galaxy clusters will only form at this particular juncture in the game — between two and three billion years of age — if the Universe is dominated by dark matter. Without the addition of dark matter (i.e., with normal matter alone), there isn't enough massive material to form these huge structures so early in the Universe. If we hadn't discovered clusters forming this early, it would've posed some big trouble for dark matter; similarly, if we find them when the Universe is only 1 billion years old (at a redshift of 5 or 6), that will spell trouble for dark matter, too. Instead, we're seeing these cosmic behemoths forming exactly where and when they should.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 31 2016, @07:44PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 31 2016, @07:44PM (#395819)

    My bad. I accidentally killed a comment I was going to make about SpaceEngine [spaceengine.org]. The add-ons are easier to install than Celestia's [celestiaproject.net] but otherwise it's like Celestia but with a ship you can fly and light-bending effects due to black holes and the ship's Alcubierre drive. The screen shot of the Gargantua-like black hole for the trailer video is something that renders in real time. It's pretty neat. Other features are procedurally generated planets around stars that don't have observed planets and procedurally generated planet surfaces outside of the solar system.

    One of the things that's impressive is being able to start a ship at one end of the galaxy and flying to the other (naturally, I grabbed a Voyager model for that and souped it up a bit). It really shows you how unbelievably vast just one galaxy can be. Then fly between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. I haven't gone as far out as CL 1001 (the interface can be a bit wonky), but it's pretty much all there, even if galaxies outside the local group are pretty much entirely procedurally generated outside of their positions.

    Don't really have anything to add about dark matter. I mostly just wanted to link that for anybody who wants to try to get an intuitive grasp of just how crazy the distances involved are.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 31 2016, @09:40PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 31 2016, @09:40PM (#395874)

    You can turn off all the procedural planets and stars. Then the other galaxies just become blobs of light, except for a few hypergiant stars in clusters or dwarf galaxies orbiting close to the Milky Way.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 01 2016, @12:26AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 01 2016, @12:26AM (#395954)

      Where's the fun in that? :)

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 01 2016, @08:49AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 01 2016, @08:49AM (#396100)

    No Linux version yet.