MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. — Some of the universe’s most massive galaxies may have formed billions of years earlier than current scientific models predict, according to surprising new research led by Tufts University. The findings appear in the Astr…
New distance measurements from faraway galaxies further strengthen the view that the strongest burst of star formation in the universe occurred about two billion years after the Big Bang. Reporting in the April 17 issue of the journal Nature, California Institute of Technology astronomers Scott Chapman and Andrew Blain, along with their United Kingdom colleagues Ian Smail and Rob Ivison, provide the redshifts of 10 extremely distant galaxies which strongly suggest that the most luminous galaxies ever detected were produced over a rather short period of time.