A recent study discovered a nest of baby monstrous galaxies residing in a web of dark matter approximately 11.5 billion light-years away. The finding was made using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope, which caught the baby galaxies at the junction of the giant filaments that make up webs of dark matter, according to Phys.org.
Although current theories on galaxy formation predict that monstrous galaxies, which are no longer in our Universe, form in environments of high dark matter concentration, scientists have had a difficult time determining the positions of star-forming galaxies in order to test this prediction. Part of the reason for this is the dust that typically obscures these galaxies, but with the ALMA, the researchers were able to make extensive and accurate observations of SSA22, which is located in the Aquarius constellation.
The discover of baby monstrous galaxies at the intersection of dark matter filaments supports current models that predict that monstrous galaxies form in areas of high dark matter concentration and also implies that modern large elliptical galaxies, which are monstrous galaxies that have decreased in size with age, likely originated at similar nexuses of dark matter, according to Discovery News.
The findings not only shed light on the formation of monstrous galaxies, they are an important step in the understanding the relationship between these galaxies and dark matter. The team plans to continue their search for monstrous galaxies and gain more insight into the evolution of the large-scale dark matter structures that harbor them.
