The majesty of God’s creation is once again defying our current understanding of the Cosmos. New research reveals that newborn stars can emerge even in red star-forming galaxies, meaning galaxies considered technically “dead.” If it’s true, it means that life can eventually arise in places thought to be technically incompatible.
The galaxies that are the subject of our article were believed to have stopped giving birth to new stars. Charles Steinhardt is the scientist who believes in this wild theory, as the new research published in The Astrophysical Journal reveals.
The stellar mass observed today might be higher than once thought
The new study says that the red star-forming galaxies might have already been very active. In other words, these galaxies could account for a lot of the stellar mass we can observe nowadays. In other words, a lot of the stars we can observe today through telescopes might have formed in different ways than scientists initially believed.
Steinhardt explains, as SciTechDaily quotes:
Red star-forming galaxies primarily produce low-mass stars, making them appear red despite ongoing star birth,
This theory was developed to address inconsistencies with the traditional observed ratios of black hole mass to stellar mass and the differing initial mass functions in blue and red galaxies — two problems not explainable by aging or merging alone. However, what we learned is that most of the stars we see today might have formed under different conditions than we previously believed.
It’s wonderful to conclude that new stars could be born in places once considered inhospitable. In other words, life forms could also develop there over billions of years, at least theoretically.
Judging by the way life behaves on Earth, it’s reasonable to conclude that forms of life on other planets can emerge and develop only over large periods of time, such as billions of years, but that doesn’t diminish at all the incredible theoretical potential that galaxies have.