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Economic Times
24-05-2025
- Science
- Economic Times
Ancient Milky Way-like galaxy discovered, surprising astronomers
Washington: Astronomers have observed a galaxy dating to an earlier epoch in the universe's history that surprisingly is shaped much like our Milky Way - a spiral structure with a straight bar of stars and gas running through its center - but far more massive, offering new insight into galactic formation. The distant galaxy, called J0107a, was observed as it appeared 11.1 billion years ago, when the universe was about a fifth of its current age. The researchers used data from the Chile-based Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to study the galaxy. They determined that the galaxy's mass, including its stars and gas, was more than 10 times greater than that of the Milky Way, and it was forming stars at an annual rate approximately 300 times greater. J0107a was more compact than the Milky Way, however."The galaxy is a monster galaxy with a high star formation rate and plenty of gas, much more than present-day galaxies," said astronomer Shuo Huang of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, lead author of the study published this week in the journal Nature."This discovery," said study co-author Toshiki Saito, an astronomer at Shizuoka University in Japan, "raises the important question: How did such a massive galaxy form in such an early universe?" While a few galaxies that are undergoing star formation at a similar rate to J0107a exist in today's universe, almost all of them are ones that are in the process of a galactic merger or collision. There was no sign of such circumstances involving this galaxy.
India Today
30-04-2025
- General
- India Today
India's young adults and elderly are 'flourishing': Global well-being study
In India, youths and older adults are flourishing more those middle-aged, a study of over 2 lakh people across 22 countries has Global Flourishing Study, conducted by researchers from institutes, including Harvard University and the University of Bremen, Germany, is envisaged to understand factors that govern the well-being of an individual and a was defined as a state in which all aspects of a person's life are In Wave 1 of the study, questionnaire responses from 202,898 people from 22 countries, spanning six continents, were analysed. Findings are published in the journal Nature."Flourishing tends to increase with age in many countries, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Sweden and the United States , but not in all. In India, Egypt, Kenya and Japan, patterns are somewhat more U-shaped," the authors questionnaires surveyed people about aspects of well-being, such as happiness, health, meaning and relationships, along with demographic, social, political, religious factors and childhood men and women around the world reported similar patterns, greater differences were found in certain countries men in Brazil reported more flourishing compared to women, and women in Japan more thanFurther, those married were found to report a higher flourishing, compared to those single, in most in India and Tanzania, married people reported lower flourishing than those study also found that people employed reported higher flourishing than those not. Self-employment, retirement and being a student related with more satisfaction than being employed in countries, including India, Japan, Israel and authors also found that young people around the world "are not doing as well as they used to".Despite country-wise differences in patterns of satisfaction with age, "the overall global pattern is troubling", they added that more data collected over time will help resolve if these patterns are an 'age effect' or a 'cohort effect'.In India, housing, government approvals, political voice and city satisfaction are the country's strengths, whereas education, taking little interest in life, along with financial anxieties are areas that need attention, the analysis Global Flourishing Study is expected to help understand 'flourishing' in general, especially in non-Western contexts. It is also expected to uncover which patterns are culturally specific and which more study is aimed at supporting and expanding upon findings from similar studies such as the World Happiness Report.
