A galaxy that suddenly stopped forming new stars more than 13 billion years ago has been observed by astronomers.
Using the James Webb Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers led by the University of Cambridge have spotted a ‘dead’ galaxy when the universe was just 700 million years old, the oldest such galaxy ever observed.
This galaxy appears to have lived fast and died young: star formation happened quickly and stopped almost as quickly, which is unexpected for so early in the universe’s evolution. However, it is unclear whether this galaxy’s ‘quenched’ state is temporary or permanent, and what caused it to stop forming new stars.
The results, reported in the journal Nature, could be important to help astronomers understand how and why galaxies stop forming new stars, and whether the factors affecting star formation have changed over billions of years.
“The first few hundred million years of the universe was a very active phase, with lots of gas clouds collapsing to form new stars,” said Tobias Looser from the Kavli Institute for Cosmology, the paper’s first author. “Galaxies need a rich supply of gas to form new stars, and the early universe was like an all-you-can-eat buffet.”
“It’s only later in the universe that we start to see galaxies stop forming stars, whether that’s due to a black hole or something else,” said co-author Dr Francesco D’Eugenio, also from the Kavli Institute for Cosmology.
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