Astronomers obtained the most detailed anatomy chart of a monster galaxy located 12.4 billion light-years away. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the team revealed that the molecular clouds in the galaxy are highly unstable, which leads to runaway star formation.
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Our analysis of the molecular gas mass per unit area suggests that the starburst disk is gravitationally unstable, which implies that the self-gravity of the gas is stronger than the differential rotation of the disk and the internal pressure due to stellar-radiation feedback. As a result of the gravitational instability in the disk, the molecular gas would be consumed by star formation on a timescale of 100 million years, which is comparable to gas depletion times in merging starburst galaxies.
Tadaki et al. (2018) The gravitationally unstable gas disk of a starburst galaxy 12 billion years ago*_: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0443-1
[...]
Our analysis of the molecular gas mass per unit area suggests that the starburst disk is gravitationally unstable, which implies that the self-gravity of the gas is stronger than the differential rotation of the disk and the internal pressure due to stellar-radiation feedback. As a result of the gravitational instability in the disk, the molecular gas would be consumed by star formation on a timescale of 100 million years, which is comparable to gas depletion times in merging starburst galaxies.
Tadaki et al. (2018) The gravitationally unstable gas disk of a starburst galaxy 12 billion years ago*_: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0443-1
