Astronomers Spot Ancient Spiral Galaxy From an Era When Spirals Should Not Exist

By Rebecca Boyle Posted 07.18.2012 at 2:40 pm 10 Comments

Earliest Spiral Galaxy An artist’s rendering shows galaxy BX442 and its companion dwarf galaxy, upper left. Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics/Joe Bergeron

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have stumbled on a rare and surprising find: A very distant spiral galaxy, swirling billions of light years away, which formed at a time when such spiral galaxies were thought to be nonexistent. Researchers say it’s an astounding discovery — partly because it raises some questions about prevailing theories of galaxy formation.

Understanding galaxy evolution is a central part of determining the early history and future fate of the universe. Astronomers want to understand the physics that trigger vast amounts of stars to clump into galaxies, and that cause those galaxies to organize into clusters. The distant relics of early galaxies has helped solidify some of these theories, but this galaxy, known as BX442, is strange.

Most ancient galaxies — meaning very far away galaxies whose light left them billions of years ago, in the early days of the universe — are clumpy, irregular globs, not beautiful symmetric spirals or ellipses. This is because they moved around too quickly, which favors the formation of blob-like structures instead.

“The vast majority of old galaxies look like train wrecks,” Alice Shapley, a UCLA associate professor of physics and astronomy, and co-author of the new study, said in a statement. “Our first thought was, why is this one so different, and so beautiful?”

Shapley and colleagues spotted it while conducting a Hubble survey of about 300 very distant galaxies. Intrigued, they went to the W.M. Keck Observatory and checked it out with a special spectrograph. The instrument allowed them to look at thousands of locations in and around the galaxy, confirming that it is indeed a self-contained rotating spiral.

This was a key observation, because other putative early spirals could be a trick of the lens, and may be actually more than one galaxy merging together or something that just happened to line up from our point of view. “What we found when we took the spectral image of this galaxy is that the spiral arms do belong to this galaxy,” Shapley said. “It wasn't an illusion. We were blown away.”

Why so surprised? After all, these “grand design” spiral galaxies are common in our cosmic neighborhood — the Milky Way is one, and so is Andromeda. The answer is that earlier galaxies almost universally have different structures, making this one an anomaly. Of the 306 galaxies in the Hubble survey, each of them around the same distance away, this is the only one with a spiral structure.

It is very large and thick, which may have something to do with the spiral formation. Or it could be the result of a collision with another system, which is at the upper left in the image at the top of the page. That might explain how this galaxy formed: You just need the right recipe, and it needs to be spotted at exactly the right moment.

“Not only must a galaxy be sufficiently massive to have stabilized the formation of an extended disk, but this disk must then be perturbed by a merging satellite sufficiently massive and properly oriented to excite an observable grand-design spiral pattern,” Shapley and her co-authors write.

A paper describing the new find appears this week in Nature.

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10 Comments

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Robot

07/18/12 at 3:12 pm

The shape of this galaxay reminds me of the shape of a swastika. Just to let you know, the swastika is a good thing for a great many cultures and religions in the world.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika

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killerT

07/18/12 at 4:04 pm

Yes, your galaxy is very Shapley, Alice.

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CodeZero

07/19/12 at 7:59 am

OMG the movie Paycheck was right! J/K. I think that we still don't have a clue what were we are in the overall map of the universe. All the descriptions of how old other galaxies are always annoys me. We describe them as XYZ age because that's how far away they are from us, but just because it takes light that long to reach us, doesn't mean that the galaxy is that old, it could be much much older. The light distance away from us is merely how much older the galaxy is than the light we are viewing, not it's overall age. I get that the farther away we look the farther back in time we are looking, which in the long run does give us a better understanding of our universes age, but please stop saying that things "this old" are rare. It's just that maybe some of the "odd shaped" galaxies are either way the f' older or just never coalesced into a spiral. Either way, it IS cool to see a potential location that is more like our own "back yard" that could be billions of years older (since we don't know if this galaxy even still exists) then our own.
Playing Devil's Advocate since 1978

"The only constant in the universe is change"
-Heraclitus of Ephesus 535 BC - 475 BC

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Bagpipes100

07/19/12 at 10:39 am

Of course the most obvious thing wouldn't be addressed....like most of these "it shouldn't be there" type stories. Maybe it's just not as old as we already pre-supposed it is?

We still have comets. Titan still has lakes around its tropic reasons. Etc...... Why is it all these things seem younger than the men in the white lab coats getting all the grant money say they are?

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CodeZero

07/19/12 at 11:10 am

Bagpipes100, it's still "however long it takes light to reach it" years old, which in this case is quite old. What gets me is the insistance that it's not possible that it's younger/older than the objects around it.

Playing Devil's Advocate since 1978

"The only constant in the universe is change"
-Heraclitus of Ephesus 535 BC - 475 BC

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TeslasDisciple

07/21/12 at 1:40 pm

We do not know, plain and simple. Sure, the spiral galaxy shouldn't be at that time period, but couldn't it simply be that ours, and for that matter, nearby, galaxies are just newer?

And thank you robot, not many people remember that. A friend of my dad's was freaked out when they were deployed in Asia (he was Jewish)

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vidar

07/22/12 at 11:05 am

It might also suggest that some of the outer galaxies are slowing down, allowing us to catch up. The variation in speed between the inner and outer galaxies could explain the time lapse.

ie: it could be possible that this particular ancient spiral galaxy was able to manifest that spiral shape after a change in velocity. (what affects celestial objects in the vacuum of space other than gravity or collision with another object?)

either case, very intriguing because it could back the notion of a big-crunch perpetual recycling universe rather than one that is fated for entropy. It's a big jump but hey, still beats meandering off to oblivion.

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thumbpick

07/25/12 at 10:01 am

vidar asked: what affects celestial objects in the vacuum of space other than gravity or collision with another object?

Answer: Electricity, could even be more important than gravity.

Have you read anything on "the electric universe"?
Very interesting. Explains a lot of the effects being viewed by astronomers.

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vidar

07/25/12 at 2:56 pm

you got a point. gravity is supposedly the weakest force in the universe so I googled electric universe and got this:

http://www.electricuniverse.info/Introduction

I like the part of the electric universe theory concerning how electromagnetism affects the behavior of plasma (although the part about two "birkeland" currents just seems like a cosmic collision of some sort since there needs to be an interaction involved), but the part about planetary craters being created by some sort of cosmic "mega-lightning" and the electric sun theory made me feel like somebody suddenly thwacked me with a giggle stick..

Anyways, I have a tendency to view things from a holistic perspective so I'm not discounting anything. It's a good thing I did some backreading otherwise I might've missed this.

Next stop on things to read/watch/browse about:
ancient aliens
lolcats
singularity

in no particular order.

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Peter10

07/25/12 at 7:09 pm

"...Should Not Exist..."??? Says who? Who makes up the rules? Humans? Don't make me laugh.

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