Have any galaxies actually faded into darkness before? Considering our galaxy is basically the same age as the universe I find it hard to believe any galaxy has just run out of energy and gone dark.
I suppose you could interpret it as the galaxy leaving the observable universe, but that doesn’t have the same meaning to me.
Have any galaxies actually faded into darkness before? Considering our galaxy is basically the same age as the universe I find it hard to believe any galaxy has just run out of energy and gone dark.
I suppose you could interpret it as the galaxy leaving the observable universe, but that doesn’t have the same meaning to me.
Yes absolutely. A galaxy is considered ‘dead’ after it can no longer generate new stars. Here are a couple of articles:
Death of giant galaxies spreads from the core: https://esahubble.org/news/heic1508/
A galaxy that suddenly stopped forming new stars more than 13 billion years ago has been observed by astronomers: https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/astronomers-spot-oldest-dead-galaxy-yet-observed