A brand-new class of star systems has been identified by astronomers. These groups, which go by the name of “blue blobs,” are filled with blue stars and are the size of tiny dwarf galaxies, but unlike those, they don’t seem to be in close proximity to any large galaxies. That’s not all however; the galaxies also tend to lack atomic gas in addition to older stars, which indicating that they are relatively young systems. These blobs must have recently lost part of their gas because of the young age of the stars and the absence of atomic gas.
According to one theory put forth by the researchers, they performed a cosmic belly flip (technically known as ram pressure stripping). An article that is available on the ArXiv contains the conclusions. Lead author and postdoctoral scholar at the University of Arizona Steward Observatory Michael Jones stated in a statement that this is comparable to belly-flopping into a swimming pool. “When a galaxy crashes into a cluster of hot gas, the gas is ejected out from behind it. We believe that this is the process used to produce these things.
These systems appear to be travelling very quickly, in accordance with the discovery that they are separated from larger galaxies, and they have lost most of their atomic gas while retaining most of their molecular gas, according to the research. The research was presented during the American Astronomical Society’s 240th conference, which was held last week in California. Finding strange star clusters was not the team’s goal. In order to seek for new dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way, they studied gas clouds, and their effort was followed by the discovery of stars linked to these gas clouds.
The first cluster of stars discovered within one of these clouds turned out to be in the Virgo cluster, even though many of these clouds are presumably still close to our galaxy. The Milky Way is definitely not nearby. Jones remarked, “It’s a lesson in the unexpected.” You could come across something else that’s really intriguing when you’re looking for something, but you won’t always find what you’re looking for.
Since it can affect galaxies joining clusters after cluster collisions and other processes, ram pressure stripping is thought to be a significant mechanism in the development of galaxies. We believe that many spiral galaxies undergo some amount of transformation into elliptical galaxies during the belly flopping phase, therefore understanding the basic process will help us understand how galaxies develop.
