Victorian astronomers have led the discovery of a rare fossil in the distant universe which sheds light on how the first galaxies formed.
Using the world's most powerful optical telescopes in Hawaii, a relic cloud of gas has been found and behind it was a quasar - a bright glow of material falling into a supermassive black hole - according to a study released on Tuesday.
Swinburne University of Technology PhD student Fred Robert and Professor Michael Murphy led the study which has opened the door to look for more Big Bang fossil relics.
"Everywhere we look, the gas in the universe is polluted by waste-heavy elements from exploding stars. But this particular cloud seems pristine, unpolluted by stars even 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang," Mr Robert said.
"If it has any heavy elements at all, it must be less than 1/10,000th of the proportion we see in our sun. This is extremely low - the most compelling explanation is that it's a true relic of the Big Bang."
Research co-authors professors John O'Meara and Michele Fumagalli discovered the only two other known fossil clouds in 2011.
"Those were serendipitous discoveries, and we thought they were the tip of the iceberg. But no-one has discovered anything similar - they are clearly very rare and difficult to see," Professor O'Meara said.
"Now it's fantastic to finally discover one systematically,"
The paper is to be published by Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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