A dozen galaxies 13 billion years old were discovered

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This discovery makes it possible to understand the configuration of our current Universe.

Astronomers have just made a surprising discovery, it is the oldest cluster of galaxies ever seen. This cluster of galaxies would date from the beginning of our Universe. This discovery could help scientists understand the configuration of the current cosmos.

These Japanese scientists got their hands on 12 galaxies that existed 13 billion years ago, nearly 700 million years after the Big Bang. Such a cluster of galaxies is “a rare and special system with an extremely high density”, which makes it possible to understand how the first clusters of galaxies could have formed, said Yuichi Harikane, a researcher at the Observatory. National Astronomical Institute of Japan.

These galaxies have not been easy to spot by scientists, who can thank the Hawaii-based Subaru telescope technology for its participation in this astronomical advance.

If these astronomers only see these galaxies now, it is because their starlight has just reached the Earth, since they are located more than 13 billion light-years away. The mastodon, the Himiko galaxy was discovered ten years ago by this same team. What intrigues astronomers is that the other 11 galaxies did not cluster around Himiko. This is in any case what this team of scientists explains in an article published on arXiv, the latter is also published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Masami Ouchi, one of the authors of the study says: “We are surprised to see that a massive object like Himiko is not located at the center of the cluster, but at its end, 500 million years ago. -light of the center “.

The Subaru Telescope, managed by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, aims to map the Universe. With this discovery, Subaru demonstrates that important cosmic structures existed from the earliest phases of the Universe.