Science / Medicine : Gas Cloud May Be Young Galaxy

Molecules have been detected at the fringe of the observable universe in the largest gas cloud yet seen--which appears to be a womb for galaxies, astronomers said last week. “It’s really astonishing,” said Robert Brown of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Va.

“The superlatives here are probably the most gas and the farthest distance at which we’ve seen molecules,” said Brown, who discovered the cloud with fellow astronomer Paul A. Vanden Bout, NRAO director. “This object is 10 times farther away than any molecular gas cloud ever seen in the universe,” he said.

The cloud, in the constellation Ursa Major in the northern night sky, might have an interstellar gas mass 10,000 times greater than in the Earth’s mature home galaxy, the Milky Way, Brown said. Light from the cloud has been traveling to the Earth for more than 12 billion years, and is seen about 3 billion years after the theoretical birth of the universe in the Big Bang, he said.

“What we’re arguing--given this huge gas content--is a galaxy in formation,” Brown said. Experts said the discovery is a very important clue about how galaxies may have changed over the long periods of time involved in their development.