Across the Universe, the stars cry out

A few years back, astronomers discovered that some distant galaxies were blasting out vast amounts of infrared light, but were very faint in visible light, the kind we see. They termed these objects ULIRGs ("you-lurgs"), for Ultra Luminous Infrared Galaxies. The idea is that these galaxies are forming lots of stars, but there was so much dust choking the region that all the visible light was blocked. However, infrared light can pierce through the dust, so telescopes that detect IR can see them. Due to the physics of the situation, astronomers also figured there must be two populations of these galaxies; the ones they had found, and another that was (very) slightly warmer.
Well, they finally found some from that second group:

I know, they don’t look like much, do they? But you have to realize what you’re seeing here: those circled blobs of light are entire galaxies, with billions of stars, and they’re a staggering 11 billion light years away.
That’s really, really far. The Universe is only 13.7 billion years old, so we’re seeing these galaxies as they were just a few billion years after the entire Universe came into being. Not only that, but the ...