What is the Baby Boom Galaxy?

The Baby Boom Galaxy is a starburst galaxy located 12.2 billion light years away. Discovered by NASA’s Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, the galaxy is the record holder for the brightest starburst galaxy in the very distant universe, with brightness being a measure of its extreme star-formation rate. The discovery challenges the accepted model for galaxy formation, which has most galaxies slowly bulking up by absorbing pieces of other galaxies, rather than growing internally. Another unusual aspect is the fact that scientists are observing this galaxy at a time when the universe was only a little over 1.4 billion years old. Evidently, the galaxy was doing this when the universe was still in its infancy. The Baby Boom Galaxy has been nicknamed “the extreme stellar machine” because it is seen producing stars at a rate of up to 4,000 per year. The Milky Way galaxy in which Earth resides turns out an average of just 10 stars per year. If it continues at the same rate, this galaxy would become the most massive ever in 50 million years.

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