By Ron Cowen
New measurements reveal that some of the earliest galaxies in the universe produced winds so forceful and persistent that they blew material from one galaxy to another.
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By redistributing some 20 percent of the ordinary, visible matter when the universe was just 2 billion years old, these superwinds may have profoundly influenced the evolution of future generations of galaxies, says Kurt L. Adelberger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. The winds could also help solve several persistent puzzles posed by the leading theory of galaxy formation.