An international team led by Tom Bakx (Chalmers University) has identified an extreme star-forming galaxy, Y1, over 13 billion light-years away. Using ALMA, they measured dust temperatures of 90 K, revealing that Y1 is forming stars at over 180 solar masses per year, about 180 times faster than the Milky Way.
This discovery provides key insights into how galaxies grew rapidly in the early universe and may help explain the unexpectedly high dust content observed in young galaxies. Such “superheated” star factories could have been common in the first billion years after the Big Bang. Read the study: DOI: 10.1093/mnras/staf1714
Read the full Chalmers press release.
Image: Glowing deep red from the distant past: galaxy Y1 shines thanks to dust grains heated by newly-formed stars (circled in this image from the James Webb telescope). Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Diego (Instituto de Física de Cantabria, Spain), J. D’Silva (U. Western Australia), A. Koekemoer (STScI), J. Summers & R. Windhorst (ASU), and H. Yan (U. Missouri)