Radio Observations Reveal the Secret of Early Galaxy Growth

This illustration traces the universe’s evolution from the Big Bang to the present day, highlighting REBELS-25, a very distant galaxy seen during the Epoch of Reionization 13 billion years ago. Credit: NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/M.Weiss

Astronomers have discovered a huge reservoir of cold molecular gas, the direct fuel for star formation, in REBELS-25, a massive, star-forming galaxy.The team, led from Leiden University, focused on REBELS-25, seen when the universe was only about 700 million years old, around 5% of its current age. Astronomers use “redshift” to describe this distance, which measures how much the universe’s expansion has stretched a galaxy’s light to redder wavelengths.

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