Result published in Nature: "Quenching of star formation from a lack of inflowing gas to galaxies"

This composite image of galaxy cluster MACSJ 0138 shows data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The magnified section shows a bright orange/red dot, which traces cold dust observed in radio using ALMA. This cold dust helps scientists to understand, by inference, the amount of cold hydrogen gas—required for the formation of stars—present in the galaxies in the cluster. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/S. Dagnello (NRAO), STScI, K. Whitaker et al — This composite image of galaxy cluster MACSJ 0138 shows data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The magnified section shows a bright orange/red dot, which traces cold dust observed in radio using ALMA. This cold dust helps scientists to understand, by inference, the amount of cold hydrogen gas—required for the formation of stars—present in the galaxies in the cluster.
*Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/S. Dagnello (NRAO), STScI, K. Whitaker et al*

Our result detecting cold dust in distant quenched galaxies came out today in Nature! In this study, we combined the power of strong gravitational lensing with Hubble and ALMA’s spectacular sensitivity to make the first detections of cold dust, and by inference cold molecular gas, in early dead galaxies. We find that they are ‘running on empty’, having already rapidly depleted their cold gas reservoirs within the first few billions years of the Universe. You can check out our original paper and press coverage below.

Original Science Paper: