The Universe’s star-making boom period is already over, according to a new study, which suggests that the rate of star-formation in the Universe is around a hundred times lower than it was five billion years ago.
Artist’s impression of ESA’s Herschel space observatory, set against an image of baby stars forming in the Rosette Nebula. (Credit: ESA – C. Carreau)
Using observations made by the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory, Dr Dimitra Rigopoulou of the University of Oxford and her colleagues have found that most of the stars of our Universe were formed in a ‘baby boom’ period five to ten billion years ago.
“There is clear evidence that the galactic-scale physical processes that initiate the formation of stars in the most luminous galaxies in the Universe have changed,” Dr Rigopoulou said on the university’s blog.
Luminous galaxies far brighter than the Sun produce huge volumes of stars as they collide and merge with each other, compressing large quantities of gas into small compact regions to form new celestial bodies. But according to the study, just a few billion years ago, these luminous galaxies could make new stars without banging into each other...
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