Researchers discovered a galaxy that has the equivalent of 10,000 Suns squished into an area as small as the distance between Earth's Sun and its nearest star.
The finding is the densest galaxy known to humans, a Michigan State University press release reported.
"This galaxy is more massive than any ultra-compact [dwarfs] of comparable size," Jay Strader, MSU assistant professor of physics and astronomy, said. "and is arguably the densest galaxy known in the local universe."
The galaxy, called M60-UCD1, was found in the Virgo cluster; a group of galaxies which are about 54 million light-years away from the Milky Way.
The remarkable galaxy is 15,000 denser than our own.
"Traveling from one star to another would be a lot easier in M60-UCD1 than it is in our galaxy," Strader said. "Since the stars are so much closer in this galaxy, it would take just a fraction of the time."
Researchers only started discovering super-dense galaxies over the past 10 years. They had been noticed before, but were assumed to be a single star or less impressive galaxy.
M60-UCD1 has a "bright X-ray source" at its center. This suggests the mass is actually a gigantic black hole has at least 10 million times the mass of our Sun.
Researchers now hope to determine how these ultra-dense galaxies are born. They could simply be spawned in their dense state, or could possibly get smaller as "they have stars ripped away from them."
M60-UCD1's black hole could help "tip the scales" against the idea that the galaxy appeared as a dense star cluster. A large black hole would rarely be seen in a galaxy of that type.
"Twenty years ago we couldn't have done this," Strader said. "We didn't have Hubble or Chandra. This is one of those projects where you bring together the full force of NASA's great observatories, plus ground-based resources."
