New observations suggest that galactic alignments are about 10 billion years old formations.
Data gathered until now seems to indicate that most galaxies develop and are arranged in clusters. These appear to form large-scale and easily recognizable structural patterns. Namely, the largest members of a galaxy seem to be neatly aligned.
Still, researchers have been unsure when these perceived galactic alignments first started forming. Now, the latest observations seem to indicate that the earliest such formations in the Universe started forming almost 10 billion years ago. At the time, the Cosmos had just a third of its currently acknowledged age.
Galactic Alignments Studied With Some Help From Hubble
Specialists turned to the Hubble Space Telescope to help them better analyze such structural relations. To do so, the researchers pointed the massive eye in the sky towards 65 of the currently known most distant galaxy clusters. Light from such formations takes billions of years to reach our planet.
Roberto De Propris, a researcher part of the University of Turku, Finland, and involved in the matter released a statement. In it, he revealed that research results suggest that galactic alignments are extremely old formations.
These seem to have formed in the “very early” periods of the Universe’s history. De Propris also adds that this discovery could be an important piece of information. He explains that this could point out that whatever caused these alignments, acted “quickly” and early on.
The researchers state that galactic clusters are perfectly structured formations. As the largest galaxies present galactic alignments, smaller ones still seem quite haphazardly distributed.
The scientists are now hoping to take the next step in their research. They will be looking to analyze the galactic alignments of more isolated clusters, not all of them on the whole. Still, this will not be an easy process.
“We’re trying to measure the shapes and orientations of galaxies that appear very faint and very small because of their great distances, which is challenging,” states De Propris.
Current study results are available in a paper in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Image Source: Wikimedia
