(Ecns.cn) – China's Purple Mountain Observatory announced Monday that its researcher Zheng Xianzhong and his collaborators have found a new species of super-red galaxies in the distant reaches of the universe using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
According to Zheng, the four ultra-red galaxies they discovered are two to four times bigger than the size of our own galaxy, and they exist almost 13 billion light-years from Earth. Their opinion is the galaxies might have taken shape not long after the very first galaxies formed.
Zheng believes there are several reasons that might explain why these galaxies are ultra-red in color. They might be very dusty. They might contain many old, red stars. Or they might be quite a distance away and shifts in the spectrum results in redder colors.
In fact, these ultra-red galaxies are invisible at optical wavelengths, so they cannot even be detected using the Hubble Space Telescope. In order to see them, one must use the infrared spectrum of the Spitzer Space Telescope at the wave band of 3.6 or 4.5 micrometers. Viewed this way the galaxies are more than 60 times brighter than the reddest colors observed by the Hubble.
Zheng added there is another possibility: the super-red galaxies may be a missing link in galaxy evolution, and the light we see at the moment might be from formations that occurred only a billion years after the Big Bang. He believes such a discovery would help mankind better understand the origins and evolution of our universe.
