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If, like me, you’re wondering what quiescent means in the context of a galaxy, it means it isn’t making any new stars: The observations found that COSMOS-10475
by slashdev 3y ago
If, like me, you’re wondering what quiescent means in the context of a galaxy, it means it isn’t making any new stars:
The observations found that COSMOS-1047519 has a mass of about 60 billion solar masses and a star-formation rate (SFR) at a level of only 10 solar masses per year. The galaxy's stellar age is estimated to be 180 million years.
Trying to find the physical processes responsible for the suppression of star formation in COSMOS-1047519, the authors of the paper propose the most plausible hypothesis.
"These findings suggest that gas depletion due to the starburst and/or AGN feedback triggered by galaxy-galaxy interactions or mergers may be responsible for quenching,"
- nico 3y agoThank you for the explanation Amazing how at a certain distance, a galaxy starts looking a lot like a living organism Same for planets, or at least what astronauts say about Earth after seeing it from space
- dotnet00 3y agoThat's probably because they all share the same quality of being a large system whose behavior results from the emergent correlated behavior of much smaller parts.
- nico 3y agoTrue, and maybe we could say this about almost anything in the Universe Even just a single cell is made up of millions of smaller particles, all moving around Everything is always either forming/growing or decaying
- aaroninsf 3y agoTIL how cosmologists tactfully say "murder." Another galaxy murdered this one. Yowza.