Galaxy Death by Strangulation?

It has been well established that Galaxies have formed during the last 13.7 Billion years of cosmic evolution.  They didn’t just pop into existence, but developed in a long and arduous process that spans immense time.  Many of them will continue to flourish for many Billions of years.  If Galaxies do indeed have a birth, as has been seen, it stands to reason that they should someday ‘die’ as well.  But have we ever seen the death of a galaxy? Have we ever seen the end for a massive collective structure of stars? We have seen galaxies collide and merge...

Most Distant Galaxy Ever Discovered!

As we push the limits of our technology, we naturally will find the biggest, the brightest, the smallest, the most extreme, and of course the most distant objects in the universe.  We are at the time in history where we are beginning to see the edges of our universe in unprecedented detail.  Eventually will will stop finding the biggest, brightest, and most distant, after which point our technology will serve to improve our precision and allow us to peer within these unique objects.  Astronomers have used this incredible technology to discover the most distant galaxy in the universe, forming only...

The Beginnings of Galaxy Clusters: Proto-Clusters Finally Seen!

The deeper we peer through the cosmos, the more we are looking into the distant past.  Light from other galaxies takes millions of years to reach us, and so when that light has finally arrived at Earth, it is millions of years old, a snapshot in time of the distant galaxy.  The furthest we can see is so far back in the history of the universe, that galaxies haven’t even formed yet.  As we look at the large-scale structure of the Universe, we see it filled with a cosmic web of galaxy clusters, containing tens of thousands of galaxies each....