Cosmic Whodunnit: What Is Killing Galaxies Across the Universe?

Toby Brown, leader of the study and PhD candidate at ICRAR and Swinburne University of Technology, said the image we paint as astronomers is that galaxies are embedded in clouds of dark matter that we call dark matter halos.

Dark matter is the mysterious material that despite being invisible accounts for roughly 27 per cent of our Universe, while ordinary matter makes up just 5 per cent. The remaining 68 per cent is dark energy.

An animation showing how ram-pressure stripping removes gas from galaxies, sending them to an early death.

Credit: ICRAR, NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

“During their lifetimes, galaxies can inhabit halos of different sizes, ranging from masses typical of our own Milky Way to halos thousands of times more massive,” Mr Brown said.

“As galaxies fall through these larger halos, the superheated intergalactic plasma between them removes their gas in a fast-acting process called ram-pressure stripping.

“You can think of it like a giant cosmic broom that comes through and physically sweeps the gas from the galaxies.”

Mr Brown said removing the gas from galaxies leaves them unable to form new stars.

“It dictates the life of the galaxy because the existing stars will cool off and grow old,” he said.

An artist’s impression showing the increasing effect of ram-pressure stripping in removing gas from galaxies, sending them to an early death. 

 

“If you remove the fuel for star formation then you effectively kill the galaxy and turn it into a dead object.”

ICRAR researcher Dr Barbara Catinella, co-author of the study, said astronomers already knew ram-pressure stripping affected galaxies in clusters, which are the most massive halos found in the Universe.

“This paper demonstrates that the same process is operating in much smaller groups of just a few galaxies together with much less dark matter,” said Mr. Brown. “Most galaxies in the Universe live in these groups of between two and a hundred galaxies,” he said.

“We’ve found this removal of gas by stripping is potentially the dominant way galaxies are quenched by their surrounds, meaning their gas is removed and star formation shuts down.”

The study was published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. It used an innovative technique combining the largest optical galaxy survey ever completed—the Sloan Digital Sky Survey—with the largest set of radio observations for atomic gas in galaxies —the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA survey.

Mr Brown said the other main process by which galaxies run out of gas and die is known as strangulation.

“Strangulation occurs when the gas is consumed to make stars faster than it’s being replenished, so the galaxy starves to death,” he said.

“It’s a slow-acting process. On the contrary, what ram-pressure stripping does is bop the galaxy on the head and remove its gas very quickly—of the order of tens of millions of years—and astronomically speaking that’s very fast.”

Contacts and sources:
Toby Brown (ICRAR-UWA, Swinburne University of Technology)
Pete Wheeler, The International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research 

ICRAR) is a joint venture between Curtin University and The University of Western Australia with support and funding from the State Government of Western Australia.

Citation: ‘Cold gas stripping in satellite galaxies: from pairs to clusters’, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on January 17th, 2017. Click here for the research paper