Peering billions of light-years back to when the Universe was just 10 percent of its current age, astronomers have spotted a colossal pile-up: 14 young, starbursting galaxies merging into one of the most massive structures in the Universe. Using some of the most powerful telescopes in operation today, an international research team discovered the extremely dense concentration of hot galaxies careening towards each other. Eventually the megamerger will form a cluster of galaxies, gravitationally bound by dark matter and ultimately smooshing together into one ginormous galaxy This stage of the merger is called a protocluster, and it's an extraordinary find. "Having caught a massive galaxy cluster in throes of formation is spectacular in and of itself," said Scott Chapman, an astrophysicist at Dalhousie University, one of the authors on a new paper published in Nature. "But the fact that this is happening so early in the history of the Universe poses a formidable challenge to our present