A cluster of distant colliding galaxies with some unusual
characteristics has been spotted by an international team of
astronomers and nicknamed "Pandora’s Cluster." Otherwise known
as Abell 2744, the cluster comprises galaxies believed to have
collided with each other over a span of 350 million years. "Like
a crash investigator piecing together the cause of an accident,
we can use observations of these cosmic pile-ups to reconstruct
events that happened over a period of hundreds of millions of
years," says lead author Julian Merten, in a press release.
"This can reveal how structures form in the Universe, and how
different types of matter interact with each other when they are
smashed together." "We nicknamed it Pandora’s Cluster because so
many different and strange phenomena were unleashed by the
collision," says Renato Dupke, another scientist on the team, in
the release. "Some of these phenomena had never been seen
before." To study the cluster, the team combined data from the
NASA/ESA Hubble Space Teles