March 1, 2020
By: Haris Ahmad[1]
Our universe is overwhelmingly huge. It extends over billions of light-years across. As we know, the larger something is, the easier it is to find extreme objects within. I have discussed many strange celestial bodies in my previous blogs but, those blogs didn’t include galaxies. Hence, in this blog, I will cover a strange type of galaxy known as a starburst galaxy.
Our night-sky is all covered by bright objects that are fascinating to gaze at. However, you are looking at those objects in the past. This phenomenon happens because as we know, the light also takes time to reach farther places. Therefore, the light from those distant objects also takes time to reach us. Let’s take the example of the closest start to us which is Proxima Centauri. It is approximately 4.2 light-years away from us. Thus, if the star explodes just right now, we will see the explosion after about 4 years because the light from the explosion will take 4 years to reach us in the speed of light.
The galaxy I'll explain briefly about is one of my favorites. It is a pair of galaxies known as ADFS-27. These galaxies belong to a rare group of celestial objects called Starburst galaxies.
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| Image Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07392-5 |
Some even refer to this pair as antennae galaxies. This is a very bright pair of galaxies located almost 12.6 billion light-years away from us. This means it took the light from these galaxies almost 12.6 billion years to reach us, which is almost the age of the whole universe. We are looking at this object 12.6 billion years in the past. This object is basically, two galaxies that are colliding/merging into each other which might be the most explosive and violent collision in the history of the universe. These galaxies are more than 10 times larger than the Milky Way galaxy. Stars are being produced in these galaxies almost 1000 times faster than our very own Milky Way and this just won’t stop because there are almost 50 times more star-forming materials in these galaxies than in the Milky Way. These galaxies just won’t stop forming stars and getting brighter for the next millions or even billions of years. Right now, the galaxy would’ve probably been formed but we can’t see that because time will take 12.6 billion years to reach us from this place. Most probably, the result of the collision will be an elliptical galaxy, which is the largest type of galaxies that exist in the universe. We don’t exactly know why these galaxies behave like this; what causes them to behave like this and what is their end result but whatever it is, we will soon find it out.
[1] Haris Ahmad is currently studying in 9th grade (O levels) in The City School Islamabad.
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