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first galaxíes. Researchers studyíng ímages from past few years, together wíth hís colleagues
the Hubble Space Telescope have díscovered the Michael L. Norman of the Universíty of Cal-
breathtakíng díversíty of the galaxíes that sur- ifornia, San Diego, and Greg L. Bryan of Oxford
round us today-from gíant pínwheels blazíng Uníversity, Abel has created supercomputer sím-
wíth the blue líght of newborn stars, to mís- ulatíons that show how stars were formed from
shapen footballs glowíng with the ruddy hue of these gases.
stars bom bíllíons of years ago, to tattered gal- The first step, according to the simulations,
axies trailing long streamers of stars tom out by was when gravity gathered gases into diffuse
collísíons wíth íntruder galaxies. clouds. As the gases cooled, they coalesced at the
Less than a century ago astronomers knew center of each cloud ínto a clump no larger than
only about our own galaxy, the Mí1ky Way, whích our sun. The clump collapsed further, whíle sur-
they believed held about 100 million stars. Then rounding gas piled on top of it. In this way ít
observers díscovered that some of the fuzzy blobs grew into a behemoth about 100 times the mass
ín the sky weren't in our own galaxy, but were of the sun. Finally, several million years after the
galaxies ín theír own right-collectíons of stars, entire process began, the intense compression
gas, and dust bound together by gravíty. Today forged a full-fledged star-and there was light.
we know that the Mí1ky Way contaíns more than Elsewhere the same star-forming process had
100 billíon stars and that there are some 100 bil- begun ín other gas clouds that Abel refers to as
lion galaxies ín the uníverse, each harboring an microgalaxies-miniature, single-starred ver-
enormous number of stars. sions of today's galaxies. Soon beacons of light
Our víew of the uníverse ís changíng com- from massíve stars permeated the darkness.
pletely, says cosmologíst Carlos Frenk of the Uní- These stars burned brightly and then fizzled
versíty of Durham ín England, and it's largely after only a few million years, dying ín títaníc
because of our new understandíng of galaxy for- explosions called supemovae. During the bríef
mation: "It's no exaggeratíon to say that we're time these first stars reigned, however, they
goíng through a períod of change analogous to wrought changes ín the universe that had a pro-
the Copernican revolution." found effect on future galaxy formation. They
heated surrounding gases and bombarded them
NE OF THE NEW cosmologists, Tom wíth ultraviolet light. And when they exploded,
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IEHAEll. NOAMAN ANO BRIAN O'SHEA. UNIVERSITY DF CAUFOANrA, SAN DIEGO (UCSD), ANO OONNA cox, GALAXY HUNTERS 17
'ICEERT PATTEASON, ANO STUART LEVY, NeSA/Ulue. WGBH BOSTON, NOVA: ~RUNAWAY UNIVERSE H
universe. If the kies remained clear, they were
about to ob erve the heavens with the largest
vi ible-light telescope in the world, the Keck,
It was eptember 30, 1995, and Steidel, at
onlv 3_, hoped to accomplish what no one had
ever done--detect in wholesale numbers galax-
i 50 di tant that the light they emitted more
than 12 billion years ago was only now reaching
Earth, That meant the galaxies would appear as
the did when they were infants. If Steidel and
hi collaborators could find enough of them,
these youngsters might reveal not only how gal-
axies first formed but als o how they changed
over time, and how they were distributed across
the universe.
Until then astronomers hunting distant gal-
axies hadn't made much progresso They had
found a few oddball objects that glowed
extremely brightly, but they had failed to find
the run-of-the-rnill, remote galaxies thought to
be prevalent in the cosmos. Most astronomers
figured they would need bigger telescopes to find
these faint objects. But Steidel had another idea:
Maybe galaxies that hailed from the early uni-
verse had already been detected but no one had
been able to pick them out from the thousands
of other objects on sky maps.
Like a few other astronomers before him,
Steidel realized that distant galaxies have their
own signposts. They contain an abundance of
hydrogen gas, as does the vast expanse of inter-
galactic space between them and Earth. When
the ultraviolet light emitted by stars in galaxies
is above a certain energy levei, hydrogen gas
absorbs it. The light never reaches Earth. So
before Steidel and his collaborators ever dreamed
of coming to Keck, they recorded galaxies that
showed up brightly in red and green filters but
were absent when viewed through an ultravio-
let filter. They called these galaxies Lyman break to a distance of about 12 billion light-years. Lyman break gal
galaxies, after Theodore Lyman, a physicist who For faint galaxies, redshift can only be deter- We figured if we
pioneered studies of ultraviolet light in the early mined with a telescope as powerful as Keck. Now it was going to b
20th century. Steidel and his colleagues Mark Dickinson, recalls. But he also
According to the color criterion, the faint gal- Mauro Giavalisco, and graduate student Kurt lhe starlit body r -
axies Steidel's team had found prior to coming Adelberger found themselves with two nights an hour each niz -
to Mauna Kea ought to be remote. But were on the telescope. If they could demonstrate that The fleeting h
they? To measure distance, the astronomers had their color method worked, they would have a alaxy, however,
to determine how much light from a galaxy had foolproof way to find not just one ar two dis- Steidel had pr .
been stretched, or reddened, by the expansion tant galaxies but dozens-even hundreds. that the galaxy
of the universe. The greater this redshift, the Years before, Steidel and his collaborators had Earth. Steidel \ -as -
greater the distance from Earth. A galaxy at already picked out their first target. Residing in ould find an ar
a redshift of three, for instance, corresponds the constellation Eridanus, it was the brightest 00 the next ni'~: ~!~
MAAK THIESSEN, NGS fTOP); MARK DICKINSON, STSCIIHU8BlE IMAGES ABOVE lEFT); CHUCK STEIOEl, CAUFQRNIA GALAXY HUNTERS 23
STITUTE QF TECHNOLOGY iGROUND-8ASEO IMAGES ABQVE)
On that night, lightly giddy from the high galaxies evolved from the simple universe of dark
altitude, teidel pla red for the first time at Keck matter and elemental gases described by Tom
the dream ,lullab -like music of the alternative Abel. Without such winds we can't easily explain
rock band _ 1azzy tar. It would soon become a the appearance of the visible universe today.
roda for each night Steidel observed at Keck and Beginning where Steidel's team left off,
a special bond between him and Dickinson, astronomer Sandra Faber of the University of
om he had met when they were both college California, Santa Cruz, is poised to break new
. jocke at Princeton in 1980. ground in the study of galaxy formation. She
1997 Steidel's team had bagged another 250 and her collaborators hope to piece together how
Lyman break galaxies and an intriguing pattern baby galaxies, like the ones found by Steidel,
emerged. To the surprise of the astronomers, those developed into the galaxies around us today.
distant galaxies were strongly clustered in a way Last March, wearing a navy blue jumpsuit that
that revealed how dark matter is distributed. The made her look more like an auto mechanic than
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UST AS IMPORTANT was another discov- tracks, can simultaneously analyze the light from
ery made by Steidel and Kurt Adelberger as many as 130 distant galaxies.
in 2001: Powerful winds were rushing "We're collecting the photo album of the life
out of the Lyman break galaxies, prov- history of the universe for the first time;' she said.
ing that there was more to the story of galaxy "The baby pictures, the teenage pictures, the
formation than dark matter. The winds, driven grown-up pictures." Astronomers are even tak-
by supernova explosions, were so strong they ing snapshots of what the universe looked like
enabled ordinary matter to temporarily escape before galaxies were born. If we used the birth of
the grasp of dark matter, which was unaffected galaxies as our reference point, she said, then the
by the winds. Not only did the winds clear out a hot and cold spots in the cosmic microwave back-
vast bubble around their home galaxy, they car- ground would be the prenatal pictures.
ried hydrogen and other elements into sur- Faber is homing in on the process of galaxy
rounding space. The heavy elements, which could formation from mid-childhood to earlyadult-
only have been forged inside stars, set the stage hood. At redshift three, galaxies were blobbyand
for future generations of galaxies. irregular. At redshift one, corresponding to a
"For a few weeks I dreamed about winds and time when the universe was little more than half .
thought about winds while I was eating my its current age, the shapes of galaxies cataloged
cereal in the morning and while I was in the by Edwin Hubble were beginning to fali into
shower and while I was Rollerblading to work," place. In between is a mystery interval from
says Adelberger, now at Harvard. These winds 12 to 8 billion years ago in which galaxies are
added a layer of complexity to the story of how notoriously hard to detecto During this largely
uncharted interval galaxies matured, taking on one saving grace, however. The emission lines
their final mass and familiar shapes. A goal of are narrow, while those from distant galaxies
DEIMOS is to open this interval to view. are much broader. With that in mind Faber's
"The spectrum of the night sky is the great team designed DEIMOS to great1y expand, or
enemy," she said, "an incredible picket fence disperse, the infrared spectrum. That enables
of glowing emission lines" -the bright light the team to look between the pickets and focus
emitted by atoms and molecules at sharply on the light emitted by the galaxies.
defined wavelengths. This picket fence in Earth's That's when the fun begins. The brightness
atmosphere overwhelms the faint infrared light and shapes of the galaxiesat different redshifts-
from gaJaxies her team wants to study. There's and myriad other properties that can be observed
TONY HAlLAS ITOP). ABDVE FROM lfFT: AAINER BECK, MPI FOR RADIO ASTRONOMY ANO NATIONAL RAOIO ASTAONOMY OBSERVATORY/ASSOCIATED UNIVERSITIES, INCJNATIONAl
SCIENCE FOUNDATION; MARC SAUVAGE, EUROPEAN SfACE AGENCY (ESA)/lNFRARED SPACE OBSERVATOAY; THOMAS JARREIT. INFAAAED PAQCESSING ANO ANAlYSIS CENTER. CAlTECH.
2MASS PROJECT; ANDAEW WILSON ANO YUICHI TERASHIMA, UNIVERSrTY DF MARYLAND, ANO NASNCHANDAA X-RAY CENTER (CXC)
ve s ill conceals what happened during th
to DEU IOS-----canindicate how the small, The answer could be that in recent times spirals
scruffy Iooking galaxies in the early universe have grown by slowly drawing in material rather
íormed lhe familiar galaxies that Hubble than through collisions. If her reasoning is
- ibed in the 1920s. correct, spiral galaxies should be forming stars
Perhap the most important of these proper- at a gentle rate rather than in bursts that
. mass, Faber said. By measuring the mass accompany collisions. Over the next few years,
0- galaxies observed at different times in the uni- DEIMOS should provide the answer.
rer e, Faber hopes to trace the steps by which A few hours after Faber finished her work for
galaxies merge and grow larger. She would the day, the domes of the twin Keck telescopes
also like to learn why spiral galaxies, which are slid open and the instruments drank in the faint
easily disturbed by collisions, are so abundant. light from some of the most distant objects in
DOUBLE TROUBLE: A pair of supermassive black holes dwells deep within a single galaxy, NGC
6240,400 million light-years from Earth. Astronomers believe the unusually bright, messy galaxy
(opticaJ image, top left) was formed from the collision of two smaller galaxies, each containing a black
hole, Wrthin a few hundred million years the two black holes, which circle each other (x-ray image,
top right), are expected to merge-one way that black holes are thought to grow. A sequence of
fonnations from a cluster to a large galaxy (art, above) shows how black holes vary in proportion to
tf1e amount of star material, reaching sizes equal to billions of times the sun's mass. Such discoveries
bring astronomers closer to deciphering the blueprint for galaxies, nature's grandest structures.
ROElANO VAN DER MAAEl ANO JORIS GERSSEN, STSCIINASA (TOP lEFT); STEFANIE KOMOSSA ANO GALAXY HUNTERS 29
GUNTHER HASINGER, MPI FOR EXTRATEAAESTRIAl PHVSICS, NASNCXC (TOP RIGHT); ART BY ANN FEILD,
STSCI/NASA, ANO DAlE GLASGOW (BOrrOM)