Galaxy With A 'Heartbeat': Astronomers Find A Pulse On Distant Galaxy

Astronomers have discovered a galaxy with a "heartbeat" and have taken its pulse, according to a study by Yale and Harvard researchers. For the first time, researchers have managed to measure the pulse of older red stars and how they affect other galaxies.

"We tend to think of galaxies as steady beacons in the sky, but they are actually 'shimmering' due to all the giant, pulsating stars in them," Pieter van Dokkum, co-author of the study and Yale's astronomy chair, said in a news release.

Stars begin to pulsate at the end of their lifetimes, and their brightness increases and decreases over a period of time. In distant galaxies, the light from pulsating stars is combined with other stars that are not as bright. The galaxy was identified as M87, which is found in the constellation Virgo. The researchers used the Hubble Space Telescope to carry out their observations.

"We realized that these stars are so bright and their pulsations so strong that they are difficult to hide," Charlie Conroy, lead author of the study and an assistant professor at Harvard, said. "We decided to see if the pulsations of these stars could be detected even if we could not separate their light from the sea of unchanging stars that are their neighbors."

The researchers found that M87's brightness gradually increased and decreased, which indicated a heartbeat every 270 days.

"Cardiac arrest is not expected until a trillion years from now. That's a hundred times longer than the age of the universe," van Dokkum said.

The researchers' next step is to take the pulse of other galaxies. The findings of this study were published in the journal Nature.

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