I move these galaxies be renamed to Open Fruits Galaxies!!

*Opel

Stupid dyslexic right hand!!

Given that these galaxies are vary far away, we are simply seeing star creation near the beginning of the Universe as we know it. Somehow, finding out that stars were popping up like popcorn seems quite reasonable to me.

20 Suns per day? So the equivalent of 0.833 Suns per hour or 0.0138 Suns per minute or 0.0002314 Suns per second.

I propose this to be added to the new measurements system, as upon review there are no measurements for the passage or duration of time.

Example:

As he sat at his work terminal calculating the difference between hours, minutes and seconds for the new measurement system, he realised he had effectively wasted (constructively of course...) 7 minutes of his day, or 0.0966 Suns.

Any takers?

This story is incomprehensible, quite apart from "a quasar is an extremely bright and distant object".

A quasar is a an object of small angular diameter which has not been shown to have an evident structure, and characterised by very high red shift. It is only an inference that it is distant, and not a conclusive one. If you believe it is distant, then it necessarily follows it has to be bright. But this seems irrelevant to the story.

First, what are these guys looking for? Quasars with brightness variation? Galaxies with quasars behind them? Galaxies with signs of high rate of star formation? What was their objective, or are they just filling the time between coffee breaks?

Second, on what basis do they ascribe their results to the galaxy rather than the quasar?

Third, are they inferring a galaxy from alleged evidence of star formation, or alleged star formation because they see a galaxy?

Third, can it be so simple to infer from intensity of an infra-red spectrometer measurement to something being warm. Phew wot a scorcher - got to be some hot new stars in there? (Copyright, The Sun).

Fourth, what is this kind of reporting about? Hello, ESO guys, we know you're there - because we've thrown lots of taxpayers money at you. Did you some pretty pictures for us while we weren't looking?

The quasars are far away: the starburst galaxies are not so far though (being inbetween us and the quasars). From other reports, the starburst episodes in question are only about 6 billion light years distant so are significantly more recent than, say, the age of the Milky Way, let alone the universe. Sorry I haven't programmed 'units' with Bulgarian airbags or other Reg-enhanced units yet.

For comparison, the oldest detected non-quasar galaxies are IIRC in the area of 12 billion light years away.

The term "Milky Way" here refers to our galaxy and not to any form of confection ...