In a seemingly endless arrangement of galaxies and celestial bodies, it’s no surprise to scientists that there’s more to space than just moons, planets and stars.

New research from a university study offers a possible look into how the universe came to be. The findings suggest the various galaxies composing the universe are constantly undergoing complex processes, including loss of mass.

The study, published in the science journal Nature, analyzed the “feast and fast” processes of a nearby galaxy. In their research, the study’s authors found galaxies go through cycles of losing mass.

“Mostly, [galaxies] steadily process gas to form stars,” said Alberto Bolatto, an astronomy professor and the study’s lead author. “But sometimes, because of an external gravity perturbation or because they swallow a small gas-rich galaxy, they get a big gulp of gas and go through this ‘starburst’ phase.”

During this phase, the galaxy will typically spew out additional unused gas along with newly formed stars at a rate that can slow star formation in about 60 million years. This “feasting” of gas by galaxies is actually insufficient to generate stars continuously because a large amount of gas is lost.

Bolatto and his team targeted the Sculptor Galaxy, or NGC 253, a neighbor of the Milky Way. Compared to the Milky Way, it forms about the same amount of solar masses in stars every year, but it is approximately 100 times smaller.

“Its center is blazing with star formation,” Bolatto said. “This concentrated star formation causes it to spew a ‘wind,’ gas that is leaving the plane of the galaxy at high velocity.”

Supported by the National Science Foundation, the researchers examined the galaxies with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, a set of high-precision radio telescopes in Chile 5,000 meters above sea level. Because the array is situated in the Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on Earth, researchers do observations remotely, wrote Sylvain Veilleux, an astronomy professor and co-author of the study, in an email.

Using ALMA, researchers have obtained high-quality spatial and spectral resolution data. ALMA’s level of precision is necessary in obtaining accurate results from light-years away, researchers said.

“I’m delighted to see the hard work of the many engineers, scientists and managers come into fruition with such a spectacular science result,” NSF program officer Dan Evans said.

The Sculptor Galaxy may seem insignificant to people on Earth, but it’s proven an important source of wisdom, Bolatto said.

“Molecular galaxy winds are important in galaxy evolution, but there are only a handful of observations, and we still don’t fully understand the phenomenon,” Bolatto said. “In particular, we wanted to understand better the phenomenon of starburst-driven winds, of which NGC 253 hosts a prime example.”

The Milky Way may be behind in its star-making processes, but it may once have experienced starburst winds like the galaxies in the study.

“There is a trace of evidence of an ‘old’ galactic winds in our galaxy, but it is much less visible than that of NGC 253,” Veilleux wrote.

What makes the study most intriguing, authors said, is the puzzle behind the starburst winds. The researchers know galaxies grow by consuming smaller galaxies or gaseous winds.

“The lack of massive galaxies is telling us something about how galaxies grow,” Bolatto said. “And that is important to understand how the universe came to look as it does today.”

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