A new class of baby radio galaxy has been discovered using very long baseline interferometry. The sources, dubbed compact symmetric objects, are the youngest radio galaxies ever observed - a mere 1000 years old - and are expected to reveal clues to the birth and evolution of these cosmic powerhouses.
Such extreme sources could have links with gamma-ray bursts and high-energy cosmic rays. Radio galaxies are a well known phenomenon, characterized by enormous jets, up to millions of light years across, shooting out charged particles at up to almost the speed of light. Bright spots of emission are seen at the end of the jets where the particles plough into the surrounding intergalactic medium, depositing around 1044 erg/s in energy.
The new galaxies are almost identical but on a smaller scale. Astronomers from the Onsala Space Observatory in Sweden and the Max Planck Institute, Bonn, imaged them with 17 different radio telescopes around the Earth simultaneously. They calculate that the jets are expanding at around a fifth of the speed of light and therefore are around a 1000 years old - babies on cosmic timescales.