The environment of a typical spiral or starburst galaxy that looks almost pastoral is made fiery with this discovery. Packed together in tiny but extremely powerful cosmic globs, distant galaxies contain an inferno of very young, massive and violently evolving stars, Cornell researchers say. They used the Spitzer Space Telescope to make this discovery.



It is in the presence of delicate, glittery crystalline silicates called Forsterite, that the discovery is made. These are glassy particles that exist in the debris disks of young stars and in the stellar wind of very old stars. But these have never before been observed in the interstellar medium or ISM - the mass of gas and dust in the Milky Way or in any other galaxy.



Via: Science Daily