'Astronomers identify some of the oldest galaxies in the universe'
Astronomers from the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, have found evidence that the faintest satellite galaxies orbiting our own Milky Way galaxy are amongst the very first galaxies that formed in our Universe.
Scientists working on this research have described the finding as "hugely exciting" explaining that that finding some of the Universe's earliest galaxies orbiting the Milky Way is "equivalent to finding the remains of the first humans that inhabited the Earth."
The research group's findings suggest that galaxies including Segue-1, Bootes I, Tucana II and Ursa Major I are in fact some of the first galaxies ever formed, thought to be over 13 billion years old.
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Dr Sownak Bose, at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, working with Dr Alis Deason and Professor Carlos Frenk at Durham University's ICC, identified two populations of satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way.
The first was a very faint population consisting of the galaxies that formed during the "cosmic dark ages." The second was a slightly brighter population consisting of galaxies that formed hundreds of millions of years later, once the hydrogen that had been ionized by the intense ultraviolet radiation emitted by the first stars was able to cool into more massive dark matter halos.
Remarkably, the team found that a model of galaxy formation that they had developed previously agreed perfectly with the data, allowing them to infer the formation times of the satellite galaxies.
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The intense ultraviolet radiation emitted by the first galaxies destroyed the remaining hydrogen atoms by ionizing them (knocking out their electrons), making it difficult for this gas to cool and form new stars.
The process of galaxy formation ground to a halt and no new galaxies were able to form for the next billion years or so.
Eventually, the halos of dark matter became so massive that even ionized gas was able to cool. Galaxy formation resumed, culminating in the formation of spectacular bright galaxies like our own Milky Way.
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Dr Alis Deason, who is a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the ICC, Durham University, said: "This is a wonderful example of how observations of the tiniest dwarf galaxies residing in our own Milky Way can be used to learn about the early Universe."