Kevin Harrington recently made headlines for finding the brightest galaxies known to astronomy – galaxies so luminous they were thought impossible. The discovery is important, but what makes the feat extraordinary is that Harrington was still an undergraduate at the time, working in the laboratory of astronomy professor Min Yun at U Mass Amherst.
Harrington and his colleagues call their discoveries "outrageously bright galaxies," because there is no technical term for galaxies that give off so much light - one hundred trillion times more than our sun. Harrington says astronomers would expect something that bright to be powered by a super massive black hole, but not these galaxies.
"We calculate that these galaxies are completely powered by star formation, which is incredible,” explains Harrington. "In the course of an hour they might form a whole star. Our Milky Way only produces a star per year. So these things are so luminous because of all the stars that are forming and going through their cycle of life and death.”
The question is: if they’re so bright, why haven't we seen them before? Harrington says we just weren’t looking in the right place, with the right equipment. These newly discovered galaxies are not only the brightest, they're the earliest-forming galaxies in the universe. Harrington, Yun, and their colleagues used the Large Millimeter Telescope in Mexico to, essentially, look billions of years back in time.
“In the 14 billion history of the universe, there’s a lot of star formation taking place early on," says Harrington. "So, similarly to the way that there are neural networks being created in a baby’s brain, there’s so much happening in the universe early on - so much material, so much gas that formed stars.”
Harrington's reference to the human brain is no coincidence. He double-majored in astronomy and neuroscience, and says he hopes to eventually meld the two in his career.
"Curiosity is the essence of why I decided to major in both neuroscience and astronomy," says Harrington. "We're leading into an interdisciplinary era of science where seemingly disparate fields are actually complementary."
One important parallel for Harrington is the insight into the human condition that the two fields can offer - a scientific perspective on who we are, where we come from, and our place in the universe.
Harrington is a graduate of Barnstable High School and – as of a few weeks ago – U Mass Amherst. Later this summer, he'll head off to Germany for graduate school at the prestigious Max Planck Institutes, where he'll continue his studies in astronomy.