A team of astronomers have used the ALMA telescope to find a slowly-rotating galaxy in the early Universe. That galaxy is the youngest ever found with a measured rotation, and it's much slower than present-day galaxies.
All galaxies rotate, usually at incredible speeds. For example, the Milky Way galaxy has a rotation speed of over 200 kilometers per second. But astronomers do not yet understand how galaxies build up to these speeds. The only way to tell is through measurements of galaxies throughout cosmic time, building up a map of galactic evolution.
Recently a team of astronomers based at Waseda University in Tokyo used ALMA (the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) in Chile to observe an extremely distant galaxy. This galaxy, MACS1149-JD1, is so far away that it's normally far too dim to be observed.
But the light from that galaxy passes through a giant galaxy cluster, and the gravitational lensing from that cluster magnifies MACS1149-JD1. Astronomers can use this magnification to see the galaxy.
Source: www.sciencealert.com
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