At the Edge of Time, a Litter of Galactic Puppies

The discovery of a black hole surrounded by protogalaxies provides astronomers with a rare glimpse of the web of matter permeating the cosmos.

Tau.Neutrino said:

At the Edge of Time, a Litter of Galactic Puppies

The discovery of a black hole surrounded by protogalaxies provides astronomers with a rare glimpse of the web of matter permeating the cosmos.

> This is the first spectroscopic identification of a galaxy overdensity around a supermassive black hole in the first billion years of the universe

OK.

> the next generation of “super telescopes,” like the Giant Magellan Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope, both now being built in Chile, and the Thirty Meter Telescope proposed for Hawaii’s Mauna Kea.

Under construction, excellent. I didn’t know that.

> The added light-gathering power of the next generation will allow us to use faint young galaxies to serve as the back lights illuminating the faint filaments of atomic matter. Until now, what is known about the web has come from using quasars as back lights. But faint galaxies are 10 to 100 times more plentiful on the sky.

Now that’s a good point.