Dear Friends,
One day the Breath of Life will retract...
http://www.space.com/18370-universe-star-formation-rate-decline.html
Be Well.
David
Star Formation Sputtering Out Across the Universe
by SPACE.com Staff
Date: 07 November 2012 Time: 06:55 AM ET
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This image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows the faint irregular galaxy NGC 3738, which is in the midst of a violent episode of star formation, as evidenced by the red glow of hydrogen gas surrounding the galaxy.
CREDIT: ESA/Hubble & NASA |
The rate of star formation in the universe has dropped to just 3 percent of its long-ago peak, and there's no end in sight to the decline, a new study finds.
A team of astronomers has determined that the rate of star birth peaked around 11 billion years ago, just 2.7 billion years after the Big Bang that created the universe. It has been dropping ever since, and the rate now stands at just just one-thirtieth its historic high, researchers said.
"You might say that the universe has been suffering from a long, serious 'crisis:' cosmic GDP output is now only 3 percent of what it used to be at the peak in star production," study lead author David Sobral, of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, said in a statement.
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