Astronomers claimed to have discovered galaxies in the distant universe that are ancestors of spiral galaxies like our Milky Way.The newly discovered galaxies are 1/10th the size and 1/20th the mass of the Milky Way and they also have fewer stars, only 1/40th as many as are in the Milky Way, according to astronomers at the Rutgers and Penn State universities.While from ground-based telescopes, the galaxies look like individual stars in size, recent images by Hubble Space Telescope reveal them as regions of active star formation.“Finding these objects and discovering that they are a step in the evolution of our galaxy is akin to finding a key fossil in the path of human evolution,” Eric Gawiser of the Rutgers University was quoted by the ScienceDaily as saying.Researchers say these galaxies are breeding grounds for new stars. These stars ionised the hydrogen atoms around them, stripping them of their electrons and causing them to emit a sharp band of ultraviolet light called Lyman alpha.“The Hubble Space Telescope has delivered striking images of these early galaxies, with 10 times the resolution of ground-based telescopes. They come in a variety of shapes and we are starting to make precise measurements of their sizes,” co-researcher Caryl Gronwall of Penn State University said.
