Earliest known starburst galaxy produced stars surprisingly rapidly

Los Angeles Times : A recently discovered starburst galaxy has led astronomers to rethink how soon such galaxies could have first started forming after the Big Bang. It had been assumed that starburst galaxies, which crank out hundreds of stars per year, would have taken several billion years to accumulate enough matter. Recently, however, Dominik Riechers of Cornell University and colleagues detected one that looked redder than the others, meaning its light had traveled a very long distance. Dubbed HFLS 3, the newly discovered galaxy was formed some 880 million years after the Big Bang and is the oldest one of its kind seen so far. It also creates stars at a much higher rate than any previously observed starburst galaxyâmdash;about 2900 per year. The discovery, along with that of a nearby node of dark matter that is large enough to grow another galaxy cluster, could provide insight into “how these large-scale structures may have formed early in the universe’s history,” writes Amina Khan for the Los Angeles Times.