You would think by now that we would know what every natural object in space is, but you guessed it, we don't. For years astronomers have been puzzled by something that they have named Giant Galactic Blobs. What they do know about these Giant Galactic Blobs is that they are some kind of material that envelope galaxies in a cloud.

Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech

A meeting of astronomers was held this week in San Diego, California. It was the 205th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society. At this meeting the latest evidence on blobs was presented. The material in the cloud creating the blob seems to glow. Scientists used NASA's powerful Spitzer Space Telescope and its infrared machinery to peer into the clouds and get a picture of the galaxies that the blobs encompass. What they learned was quite unusual. The galaxies inside the blobs or clouds seem to be incredibly bright and it also looks like more than one galaxy might be in a cloud making the blobs or clouds extreme large They, the astronomers, think that the galaxies inside the blobs might be merging together.

Even if galaxies are merging and causing this extreme brightness, astronomers can't figure out how this creates the blobs, said Dr. Harry Teplitz, Spitzer Science Center, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif., co-author of the new research. "It's like seeing smoke in the distance and now discovering that it's a forest fire, not a house or car fire, but still not knowing whether it was caused by lightning or arson."

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/H. Teplitz(SSC/Caltech)

It is hoped that when this mystery is solved we will have a better knowledge of galaxy formation. Prior to about five years ago, we didn't even know that these blobs existed. They were discovered using optical telescopes. The blobs seem to only appear at extreme distances. Astronomers looked at one area with the Spritzer telescope that had four known blobs. They were surprised to find that one of them had three different galaxies merging into each other. The Hubble telescope had also found a blob with two galaxies merging inside of it. Astronomers are not sure, but they think that all blobs might contain merging galaxies. The blobs don't seem to be that bright in ordinary light but when they are seen in the infrared and their galaxies are visible, they become the brightest know objects in the universe.

As scientists wonder why merging galaxies might be producing the blobs why are the blobs so huge? At this time it is not even 100 percent certain that the mergers of galaxies are the main force in producing blobs. "Far from solving the mystery of the blobs, these observations only deepen it. Not only are the gas clouds bizarre, we now know that they contain some of the brightest and most violent galaxies in the universe," said Dr. Harry Teplitz, Spitzer Science Center, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California.

Credit: NASA