Extremely rare 'Einstein ring' 10,000,000,000 light years away could have ground-breaking implications

Astronomers have discovered a hyper-luminous infrared galaxy (HyLIRG) following new observations of a rare feature called an 'Einstein ring.'

This galaxy, known as PJ0116-24, is located 10 billion light-years away from Earth and appears to show contradicting characteristics of usual galaxy merger behaviour.

The team noticed that the gas in PJ0116-24 is rotating in an organised way instead of chaotically which is expected after a galactic collision.

Published in Nature Astronomy, this new feature is challenging what astronomers originally believed about how galaxies form. In fact, rapid star formation in HyLIRGs can evidently occur through internal processes.

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) released new images of PJ0116-24, showing it glowing 10,000 times brighter than the Milky Way in infrared light.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope / Spaceguy44

The images were made possible with additional observations from the Atacama Large Millimetre/Submillimetre Array (ALMA), which also recently viewed the extremely luminous formation.

Previously, it was believed that HyLIRGs' intense brightness was due to galaxy mergers, which create dense regions of gas that spark rapid star formation.

However, the new observations of PJ0116-24 show that isolated galaxies can also become HyLIRGs under the right conditions, specifically when internal processes quickly channel star-forming gas to their centres.

Cornell astronomer Amit Vishwas, Ph.D., one of the co-authors of the new study explained that they combined data from ALMA and the VLT’s new Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph (ERIS).

MPI / Stringer / Getty

This allowed ALMA to trace the presence of cold gas whilst the VLT tracked warm gas.

The light from PJ0116-24 had travelled close to 10 billion years before astronomers recently observed it. Whilst the nearer galaxy acted as a gravitational lens, magnifying the light and creating the bizarre circular feature known as an Einstein ring.

Elements present in PJ0116-24 confirm earlier findings from Vishwas and his team last year using the James Webb Space Telescope.

Unlike the smaller galaxy they studied, PJ0116-24 is much more massive and luminous.

'Gravitational lensing in both cases enabled us to study the interstellar medium of these galaxies in great detail,' Vishwas stated. 'These new observations are helping us build an argument for the way galaxies evolve and build up—efficiently converting gas to stars in rapid growth spurts separated by long periods of relative calm.'