The Daily Galaxy: Large disk galaxies like our own Milky Way were not always the well-ordered, pinwheel-like, spiral structures we see in the universe today. On the contrary, international experts who specialize in galaxy formation and evolution believe that about 8-to-10 billion years ago, progenitors of the Milky Way and similar disk/spiral galaxies were smaller and less organized, yet highly active in their youth. In previous NASA and National Science Foundation-funded research, Texas A&M University astronomer Casey Papovich and his collaborators showed that these younger versions of such galaxies were churning out new stars faster than at any other point in their lifespans, suggesting that they must be amazingly rich in star-forming material. And now, they have compelling evidence—the galactic equivalent of a smoking gun. The image above combines data from ALMA and the Hubble Space Telescope. Shown in red is the distant, background galaxy, being distorted by the gravitational lens effect produced by the galaxy in the foreground, depicted as the blue dot seen by Hubble. The background galaxy appears warped into a so-called Einstein ring: a circle of light around the foreground galaxy. (Dan Marrone) Using the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)—a huge, highly sophisticated radio telescope ...