ALMA, the largest telescope array in the world, had been focusing on detecting the earliest galaxies emerging after the Big Bang, of which little was known until now.
According to ESO, the astronomers led by Roberto Maiolinio, from the University of Cambridge, changed their approach by not looking for the light from stars but focusing on the faint glow of ionized carbon, emitted from gas clouds within which stars form.
This allowed the astronomers to study the relation between newly created stars and the clumps that would go on to become the first galaxies.
"This is the most distant detection ever of this kind of emission from a normal galaxy, seen less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang. It gives us the opportunity to watch the build-up of the first galaxies," said Andrea Ferrara, co-author of an article about the discovery published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
"For the first time, we are seeing early galaxies not merely as tiny blobs, but as objects with internal structure," he said.
By Ruchi Singh
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
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