Hubble details early galaxy transforming neighbourhood
Hubble details early galaxy transforming neighbourhood Researchers show that a galaxy’s young, tightly packed stars converted nearby gas from opaque to clear only 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have found something they never expected: ultraviolet light from a galaxy that existed just 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang. That galaxy contains tightly clustered young stars that produce ionising light capable of transforming the opaque, neutral gas within and immediately around the galaxy, clearing our view. This suggests that similar galaxies in the early Universe were responsible for clearing the neutral fog of hydrogen gas that once filled the cosmos. The galaxy, cataloged MXDFz4.4, existed at the end of the era of reionisation, a transformative period in our Universe. During roughly the first billion years of the cosmos, the gas between stars and galaxies was opaque to energetic ultraviolet light. As time wore on, ...