Scientists from the Cosmic Dawn Center at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and the National Observatory of Japan have managed to establish that the core of a massive dying galaxy formed one billion years earlier than previous measurements suggested, EurekAlert! reports.
According to a press release cited by the media outlet, the researchers discovered a galaxy “dying already 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang”, with the paper's author Masayuki Tanaka pointing out that “its core seems already fully formed at that time”.
"This result pairs up with the fact that, when these dying gigantic systems were still alive and forming stars, they might have not been that extreme compared with the average population of galaxies”, said his co-author Francesco Valentino.
This discovery is expected to further bolster mankind's knowledge of how the universe was formed, and to possibly lead to a revision of computer models employed by astronomers, the media outlet adds.