Non-Rotating Galaxy found

 A giant galaxy that doesn’t spin is a surprise to astronomers     

Using instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers can measure the movement of mass inside galaxies less than two billion years after the Big Bang. To their surprise, astronomers discovered a galaxy that is not rotating as would be expected at that age of the Universe. Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have made a surprising discovery about a galaxy long, long ago and far, far away, It isn’t rotating. That’s something only seen in the most massive, mature galaxies that are closer to us in space and time, said Ben Forrest, a research scientist in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Davis, and first author of the paper.  Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope spotted something that shouldn’t exist, at least not so early in the universe. A massive galaxy, formed less than 2 billion years after the Big Bang, appears to have no rotation at all, a trait usually seen only in much older, evolved galaxies. This challenges current theories that young galaxies should still be spinning from their formation.

“This one in particular did not show any evidence of rotation, which was surprising and very interesting,” Forrest said. According to current theories, as the first galaxies formed, angular momentum from inflowing gas and the influence of gravity set them spinning. A giant ancient galaxy that mysteriously doesn’t spin is rewriting what we thought we knew about how galaxies form. Despite forming when the universe was still very young, this galaxy shows no signs of rotation. This behavior is typically seen only in very large, mature galaxies much closer to Earth, explained Ben Forrest. "This one in particular did not show any evidence of rotation, which was surprising and very interesting," Forrest said. The research was supported by grants from NASA, the Space Telescope Science Institute, and the National Science Foundation. Over many billions of years, some galaxies, especially those within galaxy clusters, merged with each other multiple times and their combined rotations added to or partly canceled each other. That’s why some galaxies which are closest to Earth (and therefore also relatively recent) can show little overall rotation but a lot of random movement of stars within them. This process should take an enormously long time, so it’s surprising that galaxy XMM-VID1-2075 had achieved this state when the universe was less than 2 billion years old. 

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, the team examined XMM-VID1-2075 alongside two other galaxies from the same era. This allowed them to track how material moves within each system. "This type of work has been done a lot with nearby galaxies because they're closer and larger and so you can do these kinds of studies from the ground, but it's very difficult to do with high redshift galaxies because they appear a lot smaller in the sky," Forrest said. "James Webb Space Telescope is really pushing the frontier for these kinds of studies." Among the three galaxies, one clearly rotates, another shows irregular structure and the third shows no rotation but strong random motion of its stars. "That's consistent with some of the most massive galaxies in the local universe, but it was a bit surprising to find it so early on," Forrest said.

Forrest and colleagues in the MAGAZ3NE (Massive Ancient Galaxies at z>3 NEar-Infrared) survey had previously observed this galaxy with the W.M. Keck observatory in Hawaiʻi. “Previous MAGAZ3NE observations had confirmed this was one of the most massive galaxies in the early universe, with already several times as many stars as our Milky Way, and also confirmed that it was no longer forming new stars, making it a compelling target for follow-up observations,” Forrest said. Current models suggest that galaxies begin spinning as they form. Gas flowing inward and the pull of gravity create angular momentum, setting these systems in motion. Galaxies can collide and merge, especially in dense clusters. These repeated interactions can either build up or cancel out rotation. As a result, some nearby galaxies show little overall spin and instead display stars moving in random directions. Because this transformation is thought to take a very long time, it is surprising to see it in galaxy XMM-VID1-2075 when the universe was less than 2 billion years old.

The team were able to measure the relative movement of material inside them. Researchers are now trying to understand how this galaxy became what scientists call a "slow rotator" so quickly. One possible explanation is not a long history of multiple mergers, but a single dramatic collision. If two galaxies spinning in nearly opposite directions collided, their motions could cancel out. Of the three galaxies they sampled, one is clearly rotating, one is “kind of messy,” and one has no rotation but a lot of random motion, Forrest said. The XMM-VID1-2075 shows a lack of rotational movement compared to the other two galaxies. How did this galaxy become a “slow rotator” in less than 2 billion years? One possibility is that it is the result not of multiple mergers, but a single collision between two galaxies rotating pretty much in opposite directions. That idea is supported by the team’s observations. “For this particular galaxy, we see a large excess of light off to the side. And so that's suggestive of some other object which has come in and is interacting with the system and potentially changing its dynamics,” Forrest said.

The astronomers are continuing to search for similar galaxies in the early universe. By comparing observations with computer simulations, scientists can test whether current theories of galaxy formation hold up. "There are some simulations that predict that there will be a very small number of these non-rotating galaxies very early in the universe, but they expect them to be quite rare. And so this is one way in which we can test these simulations and really figure out how common they are, and that can then give us information about whether our theories of this evolution are correct," Forrest said. 

Muhammad (Peace be upon him) Name

 

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A 400-million-year-old horsetail plant

 Horsetail plant produces water and looks like it came from space            

Researchers discovered that living horsetails act like natural distillation towers, producing bizarre oxygen isotope signatures more extreme than anything previously recorded on Earth, sometimes resembling meteorite water. By tracing these isotopic shifts from the plant base to its tip, scientists unlocked a new way to decode ancient humidity and climate, using both modern plants and fossilized phytoliths which preserve isotopic clues for millions of years. Water drawn through the hollow stem of a living Equisetum plant, has registered the most extreme oxygen isotope signature ever measured in any terrestrial material. The discovery stretches the known chemical limits of Earth’s water and forces scientists to reconsider how plants, fossils and even desert climates record the passage of evaporation. Along the smooth, jointed stem of a modern horsetail plant, water rises from the base and grows progressively stranger in its oxygen makeup. By sampling water from the bottom to the tip, Zachary Sharp, Ph.D., at the University of New Mexico demonstrated that the stem itself steadily concentrates heavy oxygen as moisture escapes into dry air. Values that began within a typical natural range at the base climbed to levels so enriched at the tip that they exceeded every prior terrestrial measurement. Because that chemical transformation unfolds inside a single plant rather than in an extreme environment, the finding demands a closer look at how evaporation reshapes water long before it reaches a leaf.

Horsetails act as extreme natural distillers, generating isotope patterns once thought impossible on Earth. These signatures, preserved in fossils, offer a novel way to probe ancient climate conditions. A research group at The University of New Mexico has identified how an unusual prehistoric plant may provide new ways to interpret Earth's ancient climate conditions. The study, titled "Extreme triple oxygen isotope fractionation in Equisetum," examines horsetails, which are hollow-stemmed plants which have existed on the planet for more than 400 million years. The researchers discovered that as water moves through these plants, it experiences such intense natural filtration that its oxygen isotope signatures become similar to those seen in meteorites or other extraterrestrial materials. Oxygen in water carries a chemical signature which scientists use to track where moisture came from and what happened next. A water sample holds more than one kind of oxygen, and isotopes, atoms of one element with different weights, mark that mix. When water dries, molecules with lighter oxygen escape first and the leftover liquid keeps heavier oxygen through evaporation. Without careful interpretation, the simple sorting can make a lake, a leaf or a fossil look wetter or drier than it was.

Evaporation kept pulling water out of the stem as it rose, even before reaching any leafy branches. As droplets escaped through the stem wall, lighter water molecules left first, so heavier oxygen stayed behind. Each higher segment started with already-enriched water, then lost more to air, building an extreme gradient toward the tip. Dry wind and heat can push that process harder, which helps explain odd oxygen data from desert plants. "It's a meter-high cylinder with a million holes in it, equally spaced. It's an engineering marvel," Sharp said. "You couldn't create anything like this in a laboratory." The team's results help clarify long-standing puzzles involving oxygen isotope measurements in desert plants and introduce a valuable method for reconstructing climate in dry regions. Oxygen isotopes function as tracers, allowing scientists to learn about water sources, plant transpiration and atmospheric moisture. Heavier isotopes are rare, which makes it challenging to predict how their ratios shift under real environmental conditions. Horsetails have a fossil record reaching to the Devonian, a period about 400 million years ago, which defines their long lineage. In smooth horsetail stem water, the share of heavier oxygen climbed sharply from the base to the tip, reaching levels no one had measured before in a living plant. “If I found this sample, I would say this is from a meteorite,” said Sharp. By stretching the known oxygen range across Earth and the solar system fivefold, the results gave modelers a hard boundary.

For investigation, Sharp's group collected smooth horsetails (Equisetum laevigatum) along the Rio Grande in New Mexico. They tracked how oxygen isotope values changed from the lower sections of the plants to the upper portions. The highest samples produced extreme readings that previously appeared to fall outside any known Earth-based range. But in fact, values do go down to crazy low levels. Three separate oxygen versions in the same water drop let scientists tell whether evaporation or source water drove a change. Sharp’s group tracked three versions of oxygen at once, following how each one changed together in the water moving through the stem. The extra layer matters because heavy oxygen is rare, and small biases can hide when only one ratio is measured. With three signals at once, the team could test plant-water models in a way ordinary measurements cannot. Inside horsetail tissues, silica builds tiny glassy bodies which can survive long after the plant dies. Researchers call these bodies phytoliths, tiny silica casts formed inside plants, and horsetails rank among the highest silica accumulators. In Sharp’s data, the oxygen fingerprint in phytolith silica did not match the water moving through the stem. This mismatch means fossil phytolith readings can point to the wrong humidity story, especially when researchers average the whole stem.

The collected data allowed the researchers to update their models, helping explain unusual isotope results found in other desert species. Sharp believes these refined models could also help scientists better understand ancient climate behavior. Models that predict plant water chemistry depend on a few constants, and one of them had been slightly off. Using measurements from the entire stem, Sharp’s team adjusted a key number in evaporation models so it better matches how water vapor actually moves through dry air. The updated number helped explain earlier puzzling oxygen readings in desert plants and animals that drink from strongly evaporated water. Better constants will not fix every uncertainty, but they reduce the risk of blaming biology when physics drove the signal. Scientists have tested fossil phytolith oxygen signals as a way to estimate past humidity. Since moisture in the air affects how quickly water escapes from plants, the oxygen pattern left behind can reflect how dry the air was. “We can now begin to reconstruct the humidity and climate conditions of environments going back to when dinosaurs roamed the Earth,” said Sharp." Still, Sharp’s warning about mismatched phytolith signals sets limits on what those fossils can tell without extra context.

Fossil horsetails, which once grew up to 30 meters tall, contain tiny silica particles called phytoliths. These structures may retain isotope signatures for millions of years. According to Sharp, the phytoliths work as a "paleo-hygrometer," or a way to measure ancient humidity. "We can now begin to reconstruct the humidity and climate conditions of environments going back to when dinosaurs roamed the Earth," he said. Back in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Center for Stable Isotopes ran the samples, and electron microscopes checked the silica growing in stems. The hands-on path matters, because climate tools improve fastest when scientists test them against messy nature. Extreme water fingerprints from a living horsetail give scientists a new way to stress-test climate models and fossil proxies. Future work will need to map similar signals in other plants and environments, especially where drought pushes evaporation to the limit. This research expands UNM's contributions to the geosciences and highlights horsetails, some of the planet's oldest surviving plants, as unexpected yet powerful record keepers of  climate history in our world.

Muhammad (Peace be upon him) Name