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Primordial Galaxies Swimming in Vast Ocean of Dark Matter
Artist impression of a pair of galaxies from the very early universe. Ongoing observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered surprising examples of massive, star-filled galaxies seen when the cosmos was less than a billion years old. This suggests that smaller galactic building blocks were able to assemble into large galaxies quite quickly. The latest ALMA observations push back this epoch of massive-galaxy formation even further by identifying two giant galaxies seen when the universe was only 780 million years old, or about 5 percent its current age. ALMA also revealed that these uncommonly large galaxies are nestled inside an even-more-massive cosmic structure, a halo of dark matter several trillion times more massive than the sun.
Color different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum using multiwavelength images from space. Create your own background for your favorite device.
