cosmology

"Even though everyone was expecting black holes to starve galaxies by heating or removing gas, measurements showed that the amount of gas we could see being removed was simply not enough," Francesco D'Eugenio, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge's Kavli Institute for Cosmology, told Salon.

“In the early universe, most galaxies are forming lots of stars, so it’s interesting to see such a massive dead galaxy at this period in time,” co-author Professor Roberto Maiolino, also from the Kavli Institute for Cosmology, said in a press statement.

By proposing a method for simply testing this possibility, “they’ve done ... exactly what we should be doing in dark matter searches,” said Vera Gluscevic, a cosmology professor at USC who was not involved with the study.

According to Dr Nicholas Campion, professor of cosmology and culture at University of Wales Trinity Saint David, the Mercury retrograde phenomenon was discovered during the final century BC – but it wasn’t always interpreted as it is today.

Alternatively, the observatory’s measurements could undercut this hypothesis, a pillar in the current understanding of cosmology.