In this galaxy, the process of the formation of new stars suddenly stopped after millions of years of their constant creation.
The Webb Space Telescope has found the oldest known extinct galaxy. In it, the process of the appearance of new stars suddenly mysteriously stopped, although it continued for millions of years. Astronomers believe that the culprit of what happened is a supermassive black hole, writes Live Science.
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A team of scientists analyzed new observational data from the Webb Space Telescope and concluded that the observatory has discovered the oldest known extinct galaxy. That is, the process of creating stars has stopped in this galaxy. Moreover, this happened suddenly after millions of years of star formation.
According to Adam Carnall of the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the galaxy GS-9209, most of the stars formed between 600 and 800 million years, which have passed since the beginning of the universe. But then, about 12.5 billion years ago, this process abruptly stopped.
The Webb Space Telescope has found the oldest known extinct galaxy. In it, the process of the appearance of new stars suddenly mysteriously stopped, although it continued for millions of years. Astronomers believe that the culprit of what happened is a supermassive black hole
Photo: NASA
“For a long time it was thought that such an extinct galaxy in the early Universe was very difficult to find, but the Webb telescope succeeded. What surprised us the most was how quickly, after a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, the process of star formation in this galaxy stopped,” Karnall says.
As the study showed, in just 200 million years, a huge number of very hot stars appeared in the ancient galaxy, and it was able to gain a mass of 40 billion solar masses, which approximately corresponds to the modern mass of our galaxy. And after that, the process suddenly stopped.
Scientists believe that such a huge number of stars in a very short period of time by cosmic standards appeared as a result of the rapid compression of a huge gas cloud. Also, the process of rapid formation of the galaxy and its stars was helped by very different conditions in the early Universe. Therefore, the stars appeared much faster than we see it now in modern space.
As astronomers believe, the culprit of the fact that in the galaxy GS-9209 the process of the rapid appearance of new stars has abruptly stopped is the supermassive black hole, which is located in the center of this galaxy. According to scientists, such black holes appear after giant stars die. They gain their mass and increase in size due to the absorption of the surrounding gas, dust, stars and even other black holes.
As astronomers believe, the culprit that in the galaxy GS-9209 abruptly stopped the process of rapid emergence of new stars is a supermassive black hole, which is located in the center of this galaxy.
Photo: NASA
Astronomers suggest that the black hole in the galaxy GS-9209 was able to absorb so much material over time that it turned into a quasar, which is capable of emitting radiation so strong that it is a trillion times more than that of the brightest stars. This high-energy radiation is capable of heating the surrounding gas in the galactic environment so that it stops shrinking and turning into new stars. Also, this radiation can generally cleanse the galaxy of gas, which is needed for the formation of stars. Most likely, as scientists believe, it was this force of the black hole that led to the sudden cessation of star formation and the galaxy “extinguished”.
Focus has already written that astronomers have discovered a lonely large galaxy whose neighbors have disappeared. Although all evidence indicates that this galaxy must be part of a large cluster. Scientists have proposed a probable reason for this development of events
Focus also wrote that a new image of the Webb telescope showed previously unknown features of a giant cluster of galaxies.
