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Astronomers have discovered a surprisingly large reservoir of molecular gas in a group of galaxies about 24.5 billion light-years away.

This so-called protocluster, known as SPT2349-56, is a region of the early universe where a cluster of galaxies is just beginning to form.

Galaxy clusters are the largest structures in the universe, and understanding their formation is a major goal of scientists. Protoclusters, like SPT2349-56, offer a unique window into this process, allowing astronomers to observe galaxies as they come together in a dense environment.

This new research, led by researchers at Dalhousie University and the University of British Columbia and published today in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters, focuses on the molecular gas within SPT2349-56, which they found to be 75 per cent higher than previously thought. Molecular gas, primarily hydrogen, is the raw material for star formation, which plays a critical role in galaxy evolution.

The team used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility in Chile, and an array of antennas that captured lower-resolution data to detect a significant amount of molecular gas that was "invisible" in the higher-resolution ALMA images.

In essence, the high-resolution observations allowed scientists to pinpoint individual galaxies, while the lower-resolution data revealed the bigger picture – the extended gas that connects these galaxies and fuels the development stars.

Dr. Scott Chapman, a Killam professor in Astrophysics at Dalhousie, co-led the paper and is available to discuss how this hidden gas reservoir could be the key to understanding the intense star formation activity observed in SPT2349-56, which produces stars roughly 10,000 times faster than our milky way.

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Media contact:

Alison Auld
Senior Research Reporter
Dalhousie University
Cell: 1-902-220-0491
Email: alison.auld@dal.ca