A cold, rotating disk galaxy 1.5B years after the Big Bang

nature.com

33 pointsbookofjoe5 comments

Preprint at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.09661

They found evidence of a cold disk galaxy at z = 4.26 using ALMA observations of [C II].

Thanks for the link.

They identified the galaxy they're studying because it happens to be backlit by an even more-distant quasar. Galaxies identified this way are not "special" in the sense that highly-luminous galaxies are. (That is, this selection method avoids the obvious bias of just studying really bright high-z galaxies.)

As a small aside, it's really impressive how routine tailored MCMC analysis has become in astrophysics.

Project code at github

https://github.com/mneeleman/qubefit

1) I enjoy seeing this software online! 2) What would it take to get “science” to write idiomatic code?

Like, we could fork it, clean it up, and create a PR... but this is after the fact.

1) hard: destroy publishing. 2) harder: destroy the culture surrounding academic advancement (read advancement as not falling behind) 3) easy: have recognition go to those who write idiomatic code

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