Structure of 'Baby Milky Way' Galaxy Seen for the First Time

Hydrogen emission shows the structure of a young Milky Way-type galaxy, early in the stages of its formation. 

Credit: R. Jorgenson

Astronomers have gotten their first clear look at galaxy in the very early universe that could have evolved into a structure somewhat like the Milky Way.

Made up predominantly of gas when spotted while the Milky Way was only about 3 billion years old, the galaxy, DLA2222-0946, should one day evolve into a common spiral galaxy like the Milky Way.

Yet its commonness is what makes it so important, as it should provide insights into the formation of the bulk of galaxies early in the life of the universe.

"It's sort of extraordinary for being ordinary," Regina Jorgenson, of the University of Hawaii, said in early January at a press conference at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, D.C.

Jorgenson and her team used the Keck Telescope in Hawaii to obtain the first spatially resolved images of these young, normal galaxies.

Although their existence has been known for decades, they have been a challenge to clearly resolve.

Regina Jorgenson

"It's equivalent to detecting a 50-watt light bulb on Mars," Jorgenson said. Early galaxies contained primarily dust, the food for star formation.

Jorgenson compared the process of galaxy formation to baking a cake, which requires a lot of different ingredients, the most of important of which is flour.

In a galactic cake, the flour is equivalent to neutral gas, the prime fuel for star formation.

Gas doesn't shine like stars, so astronomers had to get creative to find it in distant space. Enter a quasar, a very bright and distant astronomical source.

As light from a quasar passes through these kinds of galactic systems known as DLAs, scientists can take measurements of the clouds of gas that make them up.

"These DLAs contain most of the neutral gas in the universe at the time," Jorgenson said. "They contain most of the flour."

But the single line of sight provided by the quasar limits how much of the galaxy can be seen. Jorgenson compared it to a single car headlight in a cloudbank.

Adding to the challenge, the quasar whose bright light illuminates the galaxy also outshines it, making other emissions from the young group difficult to detect.

The team utilized used the advanced technologies of the Keck telescope to resolve the image and spectra, the measure of its separated energy wavelengths, of DLA2222-0946.

Keck allowed for a significant improvement in resolution.

The results will be published in an upcoming edition of the Astrophysical Journal.

Selcting the Right Drug First Time: QEEC (QEEG)

Imagine suffering from the crushing weight of major depression, then finally getting diagnosed and starting treatment with a drug, only to realise after two months that the medication, despite its unpleasant side effects, is not alleviating your depression.

Unfortunately, this experience is far from rare: more than two thirds of patients with depression have no luck with the first medication they are prescribed and must also endure the withdrawal effects that come with discontinuing a drug before trying a new one.

Finding the right treatment can prove a lengthy, painful process of trial and error. A new technology, however, may bypass this ordeal by gauging very early in a treatment regimen how well a drug is working based on the patient’s brain waves.

The technology, called quantitative electro­enceph­alography (QEEG), measures a person’s brain-wave pattern with EEG and then compares it with a database of normal samples to detect abnormal function.

In a study published in the September 2009 issue of the journal Psychiatry Research, scientists used QEEG to record brain activity in subjects with major depressive disorder before they began treatment, after one week on an antidepressant and after eight weeks on the drug, the period it takes such drugs to achieve full effect.

Changes in the QEEG readout after just one week of medication predicted 74 percent of the time whether patients would experience either a recovery or a remission of symptoms by the end of eight weeks.