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This Galaxy Is Completely Dead
How do galaxies die?
Most galaxies are alive and well. Stars form. Stars die. Chunks of rock hurtle around, colliding with each other. Some planets slowly sink into their nearby stars. But not all galaxies are so lively. NASA has discovered at least one massive galaxy that has been deemed to be completely dead.
The galaxy in question, MACS 2129–1, is over 22 billion lightyears from Earth. The only reason the researchers at NASA were able to detect such a distant object was thanks to a phenomenon known as a gravitational lens. Using some serious physics, the Hubble Space Telescope was able to use gravity’s bending power to see much further than ever before. And the results were surprising.
MACS 2129–1 is one of the largest and oldest galaxies ever observed. But it is dead. The galaxy is completely devoid of “cold hydrogen” needed for the creation of new stars. The galaxy stopped producing new stars and evolving billions of years ago.
Despite being more massive than the Milky Way, this galaxy is much smaller in volume and is spinning twice as fast as our own galaxy. These observations have puzzled scientists who did not expect to find such a galaxy operating deep in the universe’s past.
No one really knows why this galaxy is dead. There are no good reasons in the models to…
