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GALAXIES

Optically dark massive galaxies

A substantial population of previously unknown massive dusty galaxies during the first two billion years after the Big Bang have been identified with submillimetre observations. They may solve some outstanding puzzles related to the formation and evolution of most massive galaxies in the Universe today.

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Fig. 1: The evolutionary pathway of a massive elliptical galaxy today, such as a luminous red galaxy selected from Sloan Digital Sky Survey data.

luminous red galaxy, Australian Astronomical Observatory/David Malin Images; BzK galaxy, reproduced from ref. 10, AAS/IOP; H-band dropout, ESO-ALMA under a Creative Commons license CC BY 4.0

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Correspondence to Asantha R. Cooray.

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Cooray, A.R. Optically dark massive galaxies. Nat Astron 3, 885–886 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-019-0894-9

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