Dancing galaxies amaze scientists in Japan

HONOLULU (KHON2) — Astronomers have found two galaxies that were merging together 12.8 billion years ago. When galaxies merge, they can create a super-bright “monster galaxy,” one of the brightest objects in space.

“When we first observed the interaction between these two galaxies, it was like watching a dance, with the black holes at their centers having started their growth; it was truly beautiful,” said Associate Professor Takuma Izumi, who led the research.

This discovery helps scientists learn more about how galaxies and black holes formed in the early Universe.

In the early Universe, there were very bright objects called quasars. Quasars get their brightness from gas falling into a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy.

Scientists believe that when two galaxies filled with gas merge, they create strong gravitational forces.

These forces cause gas to fall into the black hole, which makes the quasar shine even brighter.

To learn more about this process, scientists led by Takuma Izumi used a powerful radio telescope called ALMA in Chile.

They studied the earliest known pair of quasars that are close to each other, discovered by Yoshiki Matsuoka from Ehime University in Japan.

These quasars were found in images taken by the Subaru Telescope and are located in the direction of the constellation Virgo.

These two quasars existed when the Universe was only 900 million years old.

The ALMA telescope showed that the two galaxies hosting these quasars are connected by a “bridge” of gas and dust, which proves that they are merging.

“With the combined power of the Subaru Telescope and ALMA, we have begun to unveil the nature of the central engines [supermassive blackholes], as well as the gas in the host galaxies. However, the properties of the stars in the host galaxies remain unknown,” explained Prof. Izumi. By using the James Webb Space Telescope, which is currently operational, we will be able to learn about the stellar properties of these objects.”

The researchers also measured how much gas these galaxies have, which is the material needed to form new stars.

They found that these galaxies are rich in gas, meaning that after the merger, there will likely be a rapid increase in star formation called a “starburst”.

“As these are the long-saught ancestors of high-luminosity quasars, which should serve as a precious cosmic laboratory, I hope to deepen our understanding of their nature and evolution through various observations in the future,” concluded Prof. Izumi.

This combination of intense star formation and bright quasar activity is expected to create a monster galaxy, making it one of the brightest objects in the early Universe.