Stars love to live in groups. Large enough groups are called globular clusters and contain up to one million stars.
Such regions exist throughout the universe—there are at least 150 of them in our Milky Way—and all are unfathomably old, giving no clue to their formation.
But a recent, incredibly rare celestial object has been discovered—a pre-natal globular cluster, full of gas but lacking in stars.
Deep within the Antennae galaxies 50 million light-years away, a giant cloud with the mass of 50 million suns will hopefully birth many stars.
It’s the first time astronomers have found such an object, and they’ve likened it to a “dinosaur egg that’s about to hatch.”
Technically, it’s probably already hatched long, long ago, as it’s believed such regions remain star-free for only about one million years.
This discovery is very exciting, as we could get a tiny glimpse into one of the most ancient, mysterious processes in the universe.
It’s possible that regions like these are responsible for birthing most, if not all, the staggeringly beautiful globular clusters we see today
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