Observations show for the first time that this giant “Lyman-alpha blob”—one of the largest single objects known—must be powered by galaxies embedded within it.
University of Minnesota professor part of international team that finds primordial cloud of hydrogen to be centrally powered. MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (08/17/2011) —University of Minnesota physics and astronomy professor Claudia Scarlata in the College of Science and Engineering is part of an international collaboration that has shed light on the power source of a rare vast cloud of glowing gas in the early Universe. The observations show for the first time that this giant "Lyman-alpha blob"—one of the largest single objects known—must be powered by galaxies embedded within it. The results appear in the August 18 issue of the journal Nature . Scarlata and her collaborators, Matthew Hayes (Université de Toulouse, France and Observatory of Geneva, Switzerland) and Brian Siana (University of California, Riverside) have used the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) to study the blob that holds clues about how galaxies form and evolve in the early Universe. The team found that the light from the blob was polarized. In everyday life, for example, polarized light is used to create 3D effects in movies.
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