"Shockingly cold" gas clouds could hold the key to galaxy formation: Aussie scientists

A team of international researchers have come up with a 'cool' theory as to the origin of galaxies, with research indicating they could be formed from "shockingly cold" gas clouds instead of from "hot, violent mergers".

The surprise finding, made by Australian scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in conjunction with United States radio telescopes and researchers from France and Spain, was published in the journal "Science" on Friday.

The CSIRO's Professor Ray Norris said the team witnessed the 'birth' of a far-off galaxy called the 'Spiderweb' being formed directly out of a "huge cloud of very cold gas" 10 billion light-years away.

"Until now we thought these giants formed by small galaxies falling together and merging," Norris said in a statement published to the CSIRO website on Friday.

"Rather than forming from infalling galaxies, the Spiderweb may be condensing directly out of the gas."

Co-author Professor Matthew Lehnert from the Institut Astrophysique de Paris said the gas cloud could be described as being "shockingly cold" at almost -200 degrees Celsius.

"We expected a fiery process lots of galaxies falling in and heating gas up," Lehert said.

While the scientists did not see the hydrogen gas directly, they were able to deduce its presence by detecting carbon monoxide - a tracer gas - in the nearby atmosphere.

"(Carbon monoxide) is a by-product of previous stars but we cannot say for sure where it came from or how it accumulated in the (Spiderweb's) cluster core," Dr Bjorn Emonts from the Centro de Astrobiología in Spain said.

"To find out we'd have to look even deeper into the Universe's history."

According to the CSIRO, it was its own telescope, called Compact Array, which saw the large could of gas surrounding the infant galaxy. Endit