TEAM HERALD
MAYEM: In a significant discovery, a team of astronomers, that includes a Goan astronomer, has discovered the most distant galaxy ever found in the universe which is about 13 billion light years away.
Dr Vithal Tilvi, who traces his roots to Betki-Marcela, Steven Finkelstein, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and a graduate student “went to the W M Keck Observatory which sits atop the summit of Hawaii’s dormant Mauna Kea volcano and houses the two largest optical and infrared telescopes in the world, each standing eight stories tall, weighing 300 tons and equipped with 10-meter-wide mirrors,” stated a report in kbtx.com.
The astronomers measured the new galaxy, known by its catalog name ‘z8_GND_5296.’ Ten other international institutions collaborated on the effort, from California to Massachusetts and Italy to Israel.
“It’s exciting to know we’re the first people in the world to see this,” said Dr Tilvi, a Texas A&M University postdoctoral research associate and co-author of the paper. “It raises interesting questions about the origins and the evolution of the universe.”
“Its distance is measured to be about 13,000,000,000 light years (a single light year, which is the distance light travels in a year, is nearly six trillion miles). This result is now published in the most prestigious international journal the ‘Nature,’” said Dr Tilvi.
“Because of its extremely large distance of 13 billion light years, we are seeing this galaxy as it was 13 billion years ago. In other words, we are exploring the universe when it was only 700 million years old,” he added.
“This finding is a great deal in astronomy not only because it is the most distant galaxy ever found, but also because it gives us clues about the young universe.”
“While we are thrilled about this discovery, we were most surprised to find only a single galaxy of such large distances because we are expecting to find more. This is telling us something that the universe was fundamentally different when it was young,” added Dr Tilvi.
He says it took 13-billion years for the galaxy’s light to make its way to earth. What’s even more surprising is the new galaxy is forming stars very rapidly. “Just to compare, our own Milky Way galaxy will form one sun-like star every year, but this galaxy is forming about 300 sun-like stars every year so it’s very bright,” Tilvi said.
He also informed that “it is possible that, when the universe was young, galaxies were more active than they are now.”
It is really exciting time to be in astronomy as new large telescopes like giant Magel
The discovery raises more questions about what else could be out there. “It is very likely there is life; it might not be exactly the same form as life on earth, it might be different, but it is very likely,” said Tilvi, who was quoted in the kbtx.com report.
