“Ellipticals [galaxies] …differ from spirals and irregular galaxies because almost all their stars are very old. The stars in nearby ellipticals typically are around 10 billion years old, and this means that they must have formed in a relatively short period right after the Big Bang. … Dust-shrouded objects … prodigiously formed stars in the early universe – these are the very properties expected for the ancestors of elliptical galaxies. It now seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that an elliptical starts life as an object full of gas, dust, and young stars; that the gas and dust are consumed or dispersed by the births of more stars; and that eventually after 10 billion years or so, an object like one of today’s elliptical galaxies remains.” Steve Eales, astrophysicist, Cardiff University, “Smoking Supernovae and Dusty Galaxies”, Sky and Telescope, August 2004, pp. 39, 40
Posted on: Wed, 17 Jul 2013 04:57:30 +0000
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