Humans aren't the only ones who recycle. Galaxies young and old do so too, by devouring used gas from their cosmic communities to evolve across eons.
In new research, astronomers have spotted a giant nebula in a thicket of young galaxies feeding on material some of them previously spewed out. The observations, which for the first time capture such a process just three billion years after the Big Bang, add to the growing evidence that galaxies mature by trading material with their local environments.
