This study into the makeup of galaxies far, far away broke the previous record distance by 500 million light-years

Dec 4, 2014 08:57 GMT  ·  By

In a paper published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, researchers with Australia's Swinburne University of Technology announce the discovery of star-forming atomic hydrogen gas in galaxies some 3 billion light-years away.

That's right, these scientists managed to detect atomic hydrogen gas in galaxies so distant that it would take light, which travels at nearly 300,000,000 meters per second / 985,000,000 feet per second, a whopping 3 billion years to reach them. Talk about far, far away, right?

So, how did they do it?

Writing in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Swinburne University astronomers explain that, to zoom in on the atomic hydrogen gas in these mind-bogglingly distant galaxies, they turned to the world's largest telescope.

More precisely, they relied on data obtained with the help of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, a radio telescope that measures an impressive 1,000 feet (305 meters) across. Just to put things into perspective, a photo of the telescope is included in the gallery below.

The Arecibo Observatory radio telescope is so finely tuned that it made it possible for the researchers to detect the faint signal emitted by the atomic hydrogen gas in the nearly 40 distant galaxies they targeted. Besides, it allowed the scientists to make observations about these galaxies' anatomy.

The galaxies pack way more hydrogen than our Milky Way

The scientists behind this research project explain that the distant galaxies they studied with the help of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico pack about 10 times more star-forming atomic hydrogen gas than our home galaxy, the Milky Way, does.

More precisely, it is understood that the nearly 40 galaxies this Swinburne University investigation focused on each contain an amount of atomic hydrogen gas that is the equivalent of about 20 to 80 billion times the mass of the Sun.

What this means is that they are likely to form new stars for billions of years to come. The thing is that, for the time being at least, the researchers are pretty much clueless about why it is that the massive amount of atomic hydrogen in these galaxies hasn't yet been turned into stars.

Breaking a world record

By the looks of it, this team of researchers wasn't the first to detect star-forming atomic hydrogen gas in galaxies hundreds of millions of light-years away from our planet. Still, these brainiacs are the first to have until now peered this deep into the anatomy of galaxies 3 billion light-years away.

Thus, word has it that this study broke the previous record distance for space exploration by as much as 500 million light-years. Scientists expect that once work on the Square Kilometer Array, i.e. an even more powerful radio telescope now under construction, is completed, it will not be long until another record is set.

Atomic hydrogen gas documented at record distance (5 Images)

Atomic hydrogen gas fuels star formation processes
Images of four distant galaxies observed with the Arecibo radio telescopeThe Arecibo radio observatory in Puerto Rico
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