Summary
The combined power of ESA's Herschel space observatory and the ground-based Keck telescopes mean hundreds of previously unseen starburst galaxies have been characterized, revealing extraordinary high star-formation rates across the history of the Universe.
Starburst galaxies give birth to hundreds of solar masses' worth of stars each year in short-lived but intense events.
Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea, Hawai'i, and obtained the redshifts of 767 of the starburst galaxies.
How such large numbers of starburst galaxies formed during the first few billions of years of the Universe's existence poses a vital problem for galaxy formation and evolution studies.
One leading theory proposes that a collision between two young galaxies could have sparked an intense short-lived phase of star formation.