TNRTB Archive – Retained for reference information
An international team of 26 astronomers has found more evidence that the value of the mass of a galaxy must be fine-tuned for the galaxy to be able to support life. The team analyzed the spectra of 6,472 galaxies observed by both the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Galaxy Evolution Explorer. They noted that the fraction of galaxies that have undergone a large starburst episode within the past billion years declines steeply with mass. For a galaxy not to have a significant probability for such a life-destroying episode, its mass would need to be as great or greater than one hundred billion solar masses. Thus, astronomers now possess an additional reason for why life requires that a galaxy’s mass be fine-tuned to a value not much different from that of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Samir Salim et al., “New Constraints on the Star Formation Histories and Dust Attenuation of Galaxies in the Local Universe from GALEX,” Astrophysical Journal Letters 619 (2005): L39-L42.
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