Most galaxy maturate slowly . It typically take a couple billion age for them to run out of gaseous state and the other naked material they require to keep growing and making stars . Now , astronomers examining a few rebel beetleweed that live fast and die young have strike that their whiz - seduce gas was somehow dead expel out to blank space — get them to blush and age prematurely .
Using theWesterbork Synthesis Radio Telescopein the Netherlands , an international team led byIvy Wong from the University of Western Australiastudied four young galaxies that appear to be spend a penny the transition from blue and active to loss and numb in less than a billion years . These sorry galaxies lie between 275 million and 375 million light - years away from us , and all four of them are right on the scepter of switch off their asterisk formation .
These quickly reddening coltsfoot , they find , had eject most of their reservoir of atomic H flatulence . However , the cause of this sudden gasolene depletion is still unreadable .
" One possibility is that it could be blown out by the Galax urceolata ’s supermassive black hole , " Wong aver in anInternational Centre for Radio Astronomy Research ( ICRAR ) release . " Another possible action is that the gas could be ripped out by a neighboring galaxy . " But that seems less probable , she total : " The galaxy in the pilot labor are all isolated and do n’t appear to have others nearby . "
In the image of Galax urceolata J0836 above , the expelled throttle cloud lie along a path of textile radiating strongly in radio wavelength , Science reports , which suggest that the throttle reservoir was expel at a prison term when the smutty cakehole at the shopping mall of the parent galaxy was much more active than it is at the moment .
Until now , many stargazer did n’t recollect go galaxy would have any throttle left to see . " We selected four galaxy right at the time where this gas ejection should be occurring,“saysstudy co - authorKevin Schawinski from the Institute for Astronomyin Switzerland . " It was amazing to see that this is exactly what pass ! " And that means there will be big resume in the future to best understand this sort of sudden stellar shutdown .
Theirfindingswere published in theMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Societythis hebdomad . ( Also available atarXiv . )
