Distant 'teenage' galaxy grew fast

Astronomers have found a huge galaxy in the early universe that is forming new stars at such a high rate that it's like "a teenager going through a growth spurt."

The U.S. and U.K. researchers found areas in the young galaxy that are creating stars 100 times faster than in the star-forming regions of the Milky Way, such as the Orion Nebula.

"This galaxy is like a teenager going through a growth spurt," said Mark Swinbank of England's Durham University, in a statement.

Because the galaxy, called SMM J2135-0102, is 10 billion light years away, the astronomers are seeing it as it would have appeared when the universe was just three billion years old.

The astronomers found the galaxy using the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope and did followup observations using the Submillimeter Array telescope in Hawaii.

They found four star-forming regions in the galaxy, each one more than 100 times brighter than the Orion Nebula.

"We don't fully understand why the stars are forming so rapidly but our results suggest that stars formed much more efficiently in the early universe than they do today," said Swinbank.

The research appeared this week in the online edition of the journal Nature.