The early death of cosmic giants
2020.06.18 14:14 - Anna RędaszekThe majority of the stars in the local Universe belong to massive, red, spheroidal, old galaxies that died several billion years ago, ceasing their active formation of new stars. In our current view, these galaxies experienced an intense burst of growth immediately followed by a sudden death early in the Universe, so that we routinely observe a numerous population of such dead cosmic giants already in place 10 Gyr ago at z~2, comfortably reproduced by the most recent galaxy formation models and simulations.