Ever wonder what our Milky Way galaxy looked like in its early history? Astronomers using the Webb Telescope (JWST) found another galaxy that's almost a mirror image of our galaxy as an infant.
It's nicknamed"The Sparkler". That's because it has about two dozen glittering globular clusters orbiting around it. There are also a few dwarf galaxies there, being swallowed up by the galaxy.
Next came an era of"mergers and acquisitions" as the infant Milky Way began cannibalizing nearby dwarf galaxies. That's a big evolutionary step. It's possible that at least half our own galaxy's mass came from those mergers. Over time, all the material coalesced into the spiral disk where the Sun and most other stars exist today.Will the Sparkler follow the same evolutionary path as the Milky Way? From the JWST data, it seems that it will.
"We are excited by this unique opportunity to study both the formation of globular clusters and an infant Milky Way, at a time when the Universe was only 1/3 of its present age," he said. It turns out that the Sparker's clusters do have striking similarities to some of the Milky Way's globulars. Several seemed to have formed very early and the stars are quite metal-rich. That seems to indicate a very rapid process of chemical enrichment in the early Universe.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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