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A dust-obscured massive maximum-starburst galaxy at a redshift of 6.34
Thomson, A. P.; Altieri, B.; Pérez-Fournon, I. +61 more
Massive present-day early-type (elliptical and lenticular) galaxies probably gained the bulk of their stellar mass and heavy elements through intense, dust-enshrouded starbursts--that is, increased rates of star formation--in the most massive dark-matter haloes at early epochs. However, it remains unknown how soon after the Big Bang massive starbu…
Dusty starburst galaxies in the early Universe as revealed by gravitational lensing
Sharon, K.; Gladders, M. D.; Menten, K. M. +67 more
In the past decade, our understanding of galaxy evolution has been revolutionized by the discovery that luminous, dusty starburst galaxies were 1,000 times more abundant in the early Universe than at present. It has, however, been difficult to measure the complete redshift distribution of these objects, especially at the highest redshifts (z > …
An old disk still capable of forming a planetary system
Zhang, Ke; Gorti, Uma; Henning, Thomas +11 more
From the masses of the planets orbiting the Sun, and the abundance of elements relative to hydrogen, it is estimated that when the Solar System formed, the circumstellar disk must have had a minimum mass of around 0.01 solar masses within about 100 astronomical units of the star. (One astronomical unit is the Earth-Sun distance.) The main constitu…
The rapid assembly of an elliptical galaxy of 400 billion solar masses at a redshift of 2.3
Altieri, B.; Aussel, H.; Pérez-Fournon, I. +41 more
Stellar archaeology shows that massive elliptical galaxies formed rapidly about ten billion years ago with star-formation rates of above several hundred solar masses per year. Their progenitors are probably the submillimetre bright galaxies at redshifts z greater than 2. Although the mean molecular gas mass (5 × 1010 solar masses) of th…