When the universe was young, at least one stellar factory was churning out 1,000 sun-like stars every year, according to a new study. Using an array of telescopes in the French Alps, researchers
carefully scrutinised a distant galaxy whose light has taken so long to reach Earth that it appears as it was just 870 million years after the big bang [New Scientist].
The Milky Way currently forms about one sun per year, says study coauthor Chris Carilli, indicating that massive galaxies may have formed very quickly in the universe's early days.
The immense scale of the stellar factory is probably due to the fact that there was a lot more gas around in the early universe, Carilli says. Matter in the universe was indeed much denser soon after the big bang, since space itself has expanded over time [New Scientist].
The rate of star formation is still limited by ...
