A team of scientists from Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada and two Spanish researchers from the University of Oviedo and the Institute of Physics of Cantabria have managed to detect hundreds of galaxy groupings between 2,000-3,000 million years after the Big Bang, located much more far from what had been explored until now and with a lot of new stars inside .
This discovery, thanks to the Planck and Herschel satellites of the European Space Agency (ESA), may help astronomers solve the key problem of the origin of the first large-scale clusters of galaxies .
These hundreds of new galaxies, previously unknown, are found in groups and could embody the initial phase of constitution of galaxy clusters, a mystery that is crucial to understanding how gravity could have collapsed the regions of highest density of matter. energy in the fraction of a second that the universe was so hot that these particles are only accessible on Earth with a particle accelerator; that is, in the primeval universe.
“With a bit of fantasy, we could say that Planck has discovered the treasure chest by finding these compact groups of galaxies in the most distant universe and Herschel has looked inside to discover the shiny gold coins hidden there: the galaxies of high star formation. I am especially pleased with this discovery because it confirms our predictions made ten years ago . And secondly, because, with this excellent result, we have yet another confirmation of the versatility and power of the two satellites ”, explains Luigi Toffolatti, co-author of the work.
The study, which has been published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics , will help determine the baryon content of the universe (the matter and elementary particles that we and the stars are made of) and find out the role of dark matter in the evolution of the universe .
” We are only at the beginning of this project , the most impressive results are yet to come in the coming months,” concludes Hervé Dole, study leader.
