CO in the early universe clouds cosmologists' views
Glanz, J.
Science 273(5275): 581
1996
ISSN/ISBN: 0036-8075 PMID: 8701311 Document Number: 460868
Two reports in this week's Nature have sounded warnings to standard cosmological theory. Research teams led by Kouji Ohta and Alain Omont have detected the glow of a giant cloud of carbon monoxide near a distant quasar that corresponds to a time when the Universe was just a billion years old. The amount of gas present and the presence of the heavy atoms carbon and oxygen indicate a starburst, or stellar nursery, in which the most massive and short-lived stars have already died and exploded. Such widespread galaxy formation is not predicted by accepted cosmological models until much later in the Universe's history.