Guido Roberts-Borsani and colleagues from the University of Geneva made a surprising discovery. While looking at the distant galaxy A2744-YD4 with the James Webb Space Telescope, they noticed signatures of bright young stars, but also fainter, older stars that had never been seen before in any galaxy. By calculating their ages, they determined that after about 100 million years of star formation, the galaxy went silent for about 20 million years before returning to star formation.
It’s a behavior that hasn’t been observed before, and researchers don’t know what might be causing it. Usually, extinct galaxies go silent forever and never form new stars again. Scientists say the process could be caused by new fuel in the form of a merger with another galaxy or gas being blown outward by a supernova.
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As Christopher Hayward of the Flatiron Institute in New York says:
If this violent behavior is confirmed, it would explain some puzzling observations from the James Webb Space Telescope. There have been no observations of what kind of explosion is needed to form stars, but here is the evidence.
Hayward speculates that the process occurring in this zombie galaxy could be widespread and could affect many other galaxies. However, more research is needed, and the James Webb Space Telescope is expected to be excellent.
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