Astronomers discover dying galaxy bleeding gas in space

• Astronomers can see a distant galaxy dying as it bleeds cold gas into space.
• Such a gas is essential for the formation of stars. Galaxies die when they can no longer do so.
• This galaxy was formed from a collision in which two galaxies merged into one. This has left a “tail” that throws out 10,000 suns of gasoline each year.
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For the first time, astronomers can clearly see a galaxy starting to die.

Nine billion light years away, galaxy ID2299 is losing critical cold gas that helps create new stars. Each year, it bleeds enough gas to produce 10,000 suns. Already, it has lost almost half of its cold gas. The rest is used to form new stars, at a rate hundreds of times faster than in the Milky Way.

At this rate, the galaxy will soon run out of reserve gas and be unable to make new stars. For a galaxy, it is death.

The team of researchers who discovered ID2299 and its imminent demise published their results Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy.

They believe ID2299 formed after two galaxies crashed and merged, creating a new galaxy. This resulting galaxy has a telltale “tidal tail,” from which streams of stars and interstellar matter creep through space.

Tide tails often form when the outer layers of galaxies are removed as they merge. These tails in distant galaxies are generally too dark for astronomers on Earth to see, although they have been detected in hundreds of galaxies. The researchers spotted this one as it began to expand into space. This is where all the gas escapes.

The discovery suggests that major collisions can let galaxies leak vital gases into space, a process that ends up starving them and stopping star formation, killing them.

“This is the first time that we have observed a typical massive star-forming galaxy in the distant universe on the verge of ‘dying’ due to a massive ejection of cold gas,” Annagrazia Puglisi, lead author of the ‘study and researcher at Durham University in England, said in a press release.

More than one way to “ die ”

As stars form, they produce winds. Scientists believe that there is a black hole at the center of every massive galaxy, which also produces wind by devouring material that falls in its gravitational pull. Astronomers believe that these star and black hole winds carry star-forming material into deep space, ultimately causing the death of galaxies.

But the discovery of ID2299’s gas-leaking tail reveals a new path to galactic death.

“Our study suggests that gas ejections can be produced by fusions, and that winds and tidal tails can look very similar,” said Emanuele Daddi, study co-author and astrophysicist at the Center for Nuclear Research de Saclay in France, in the Liberation. “This could lead us to rethink our understanding of how galaxies ‘die’.”

The discovery could also offer clues to the direction our own galaxy is heading. The Milky Way sends puffs of its own cold gas into a vacuum, and it is also on its way to colliding with the Andromeda galaxy in about 4 billion years.

“Witnessing such a massive disturbing event adds an important piece to the complex puzzle of galaxy evolution,” said Chiara Circosta, study co-author and researcher at University College London , in the press release.

Researchers stumbled upon this doomed galaxy while studying cold gas in 100 distant galaxies, using the Atacama Large Millimeter / Submillimeter Array (ALMA) in the Chilean desert.

“I was eager to learn more about this strange object because I was convinced that there was an important lesson to be learned about how distant galaxies evolve,” Puglisi said.