An ancient, dying galaxy could help astronomers learn more about the Milky Way

The most distant dying galaxy known to astronomers contains nearly one trillion stars, making this family of stars is significantly larger than our own Milky Way galaxy. Analysis of the core of this galaxy shows this object started to form 12 billion years ago — just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang. Like humans, galaxies are born, live out their lives, and fall into silence. The first galaxies formed just a couple hundred million years after the Big Bang, as the gravitational pull of both normal matter and dark matter pulled stars together into groups. Now, by studying dying galaxies, astronomers…

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