Astronomers Discover Galaxy They Thought Couldn’t Exist - 3:02
PM - Categories: Space Astronomers have spotted one of the
rarest and most extreme galaxy clusters in the universe and,
behind it, an object that shouldn’t exist. Galaxy clusters are
collections of galaxies that orbit one another and are the most
massive objects in the universe. The newly discovered cluster,
first detected by the Hubble space telescope, is over 500
trillion times the mass of the sun. It is located approximately
10 billion light-years away. Because looking out into the
distant cosmos means also looking back in time, the cluster
formed during an era when the universe was a quarter its present
age. The cluster, named IDCS J1426.5+3508, is extreme because
during this period in cosmic history, massive collections of
galaxies were just beginning to form. Only one other cluster of
comparable size has been seen at this distance and it is a
lightweight compared to IDCS J1426.5+3508. Adding to the
object’s strangeness, a mysterious arc of b