科技英语新闻:Surprisingly young galaxy discovered in distant universe

LOS ANGELES, April 12 (Xinhua) -- With the help of NASA Telescopes, astronomers have uncovered one of the youngest galaxies in the distant universe, with stars that formed 13.5 billion years ago, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) announced on Tuesday.

The finding addresses questions about when the first galaxies arose, and how the early universe evolved, JPL noted in a press release.

Infrared data from both the Hubble Space Telescope and the post- coolant, or "warm," phase of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope mission revealed that the galaxy's stars are quite mature, which means they must have formed when the universe was just a toddler, said JPL in Pasadena, Los Angeles.

This challenges theories of how soon galaxies formed in the first years of the universe and could even help solve the mystery of how the hydrogen fog that filled the early universe was cleared, according to astronomers involved in the study.

This galaxy is not the most distant ever observed, but it is one of the youngest to be observed with such clarity, JPL said.

Normally, galaxies like this one are extremely faint and difficult to study, but, in this case, nature has provided the astronomers with a cosmic magnifying glass, JPL said.

The galaxy's image is being magnified by the gravity of a massive cluster of galaxies parked in front of it, making it appear 11 times brighter. This phenomenon is called gravitational lensing.

"Without this big lens in space, we could not study galaxies this faint with currently available observing facilities," said Eiichi Egami of the University of Arizona in Tucson. "Thanks to nature, we have this great opportunity to see our universe as it was eons ago."

The findings may help explain how the early universe became " reionized," according to JPL.

"Seeing a galaxy as it appeared near the beginning of the universe is an awe-inspiring feat enabled by innovative technology and the fortuitous effect of gravitational lensing," Jon Morse, NASA's Astrophysics Division director at the agency's headquarters in Washington, said in the release.

"Observations like this open a window across space and time, but more importantly, they inspire future work to one day peer at the stars that lit up the universe following the big bang."