A merging pair of massive quiescent galaxies at <i>z</i> = 3.44 in the Cosmic Vine
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We report the spectroscopic confirmation of a merging pair of massive quiescent galaxies at z = 3.44. Using JWST observations, we confirm that the two galaxies lie at a projected separation of 4.5 kpc with a velocity offset of ∼680 km s −1 ( δ z ∼ 0.01). The pair resides in the core of a known rich overdensity of galaxies, dubbed the “Cosmic Vine”. For both pair members, modeling of the spectral energy distributions and faint rest-frame optical emission lines indicate high stellar masses (log( M ⋆ / M ⊙ ) ∼ 10.9) and suppressed star formation (log(sSFR/yr −1 ) < −10), more than an order of magnitude below the level of the star formation main sequence at this redshift. We then explore the Illustris-TNG simulation and the GAEA and SHARK semi-analytical models to examine whether they produce a pair of massive quiescent galaxies akin to that of the Cosmic Vine. While all models produce close pairs of massive quiescent galaxies at 2 < z < 4 with comparable separations and velocity offsets, their predicted number densities are 10–80 times lower than our observational constraint. This discrepancy cannot be fully explained by coarse time sampling in these models or the general challenge of forming early massive quiescent galaxies in simulations. Given that > 90% of simulated pairs in the models that we analyzed merge by z = 0, our findings suggest that our observed pair will likely coalesce into a single massive galaxy. The merger, occurring in the dense core of a large-scale structure, might represent a critical event in the formation of a brightest cluster galaxy and the morphological transformation of high-redshift disky quiescent galaxies into early-type ellipticals.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".