A team of scientists from the UK and the US has discovered a galaxy far away from us which is tossing out stars 250 times faster than our Milky Way. The discovery of the galaxy, about 10 billion light years away from the earth, will help researchers understand how the Milky Way has been formed.

Galaxy SMM J2135- 0102 has four distinct star- forming regions, each of which is 100 times brighter than Milky Way locations for example the Orion Nebula. The team that discovered the galaxy was led by scientists from the UK's Durham University.
It also comprised researchers from European Southern University and the Massachusetts based Harvard- Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics. Mr.Mark Swinbank, lead scientist in Durham University said that the new galaxy is forming stars at about 250 suns per year and added that Our Milky Way is forming at about two suns per year. Because of the time it takes light to reach the earth, the scientists found the galaxy as it would have appeared 10 billion years ago - just three billion years after the Big Bang.

It was about Milky Way- sized at that time. But today, 10 billion years later, it would have grown into a giant elliptical galaxy very much massive than the Milky Way." When we look at the stars in the Milky Way, we can find that most are about 10 billion years old. So, in order to understand how the Milky Way was formed, we must look back to these times. Swinbank said that the main result of our study is that we have located four individual star- forming regions.

Each of these regions is forming stars very rapidly than we would expect, given their sizes. Swinbank added that the regions are much more efficient at forming stars than we typically see in the local universe. The findings signify star formation was more vigorous in the early universe.