Two hungry young galaxies that collided 11 billion years ago are rapidly forming a massive galaxy about 10 times the size of the Milky Way, astronomers have discovered.
Capturing the creation of this type of large, short-lived star body is extremely rare — the equivalent of discovering a missing link between winged dinosaurs and early birds, said the scientists, who relied on the once-powerful Herschel space telescope and observatories around the world.
The new mega-galaxy, dubbed HXMM01, “is the brightest, most luminous and most gas-rich submillimetre-bright galaxy merger known,” researchers said.
HXMM01 is fading away as fast as it forms, a victim of its own cataclysmic birth. As the two parent galaxies smashed together, they gobbled up huge amounts of hydrogen, emptying that corner of the universe of the star-making gas.