The universe is still full of mysteries for science. A group of researchers has managed to measure the age of the galaxy z8_GND_5296 thanks to the spectrograph installed in the Keck telescope, ten meters in diameter and located in the middle of the Pacific, in Hawaii. Exactly the galaxy is about 13,000 million years old , that is, it was formed when the universe was only five percent of its current age.
The Big Bang, the sudden explosion that began the formation of the universe as we know it today, occurred approximately 13.8 billion years ago. And little by little, with the expansion of space, the different galaxies that make up the universe were formed. Well, just 700 million years after the Big Bang, z8_GND_5296 was formed.
The study by researchers at the University of Texas and published in the latest issue of the journal Nature reveals that the galaxy continues to transform gas and dust into new stars at a speed much greater than that of our own galaxy. In fact, according to the researchers' calculations, while one to two Sun-like stars form each year in the Milky Way, around 300 are formed annually in z8_GND_5296 .
As Bahram Mobasher of the University of California Riverside and co-author of the study points out, “By observing a galaxy so far back in time, we can study the first formation of galaxies . And by comparing the properties of galaxies at different distances, it is possible to explore their evolution throughout the age of the Universe ”.
