OpenCourseWare contributor and staunch supporter James Bullock (Professor of Physics and Astronomy at UC Irvine) was “pretty excited” by news that theoretical predictions he and a former graduate student made years ago were validated by recent observations of a galaxy in its early stages of formation. The observations were reported online in the journal Nature by Caltech astrophysicist Christopher Martin and his colleagues, and appear to show a protogalactic disk some 10 billion light-years away being fed by a stream of hydrogen gas shepherded by a strand of the cosmic web. (The cosmic web is a universe-wide network of ordinary and dark matter with galaxy clusters at the nodes.) Knowledge of early galaxy formation is sketchy at best, and this apparent connection between the cosmic web and the presence of the protogalactic disk provides important clues about the dynamics of the early universe. (Looking at faraway objects is effectively looking back in time. This proto-galaxy is 10 billion light-years away, which means that we are seeing it as it appeared 10 billion years ago!)
Professor Bullock’s research interests focus on galaxy formation, dark matter, and our Milky Way galactic home. His popular introductory course on cosmology is available here on UC Irvine’s OpenCourseWare site and you can find more information about his research actives on his website.