  We have previously found in the Hubble Deep Field a significant angular
correlation of faint, high color-redshift objects on scales below one
arcsecond, or several kiloparsecs in metric size. We examine the correlation
and nearest neighbor statistics to conclude that 38% of these objects in the
HDF have a companion within one arcsecond, three times the number expected in a
random distribution with the same number of objects. We examine three dynamical
scenarios for these object multiplets: 1) the objects are star-forming regions
within normal galaxies, whose disks have been relatively dimmed by K-correction
and surface brightness dimming; 2) they are fragments merging into large
galaxies; 3) they are satellites accreting onto normal L_* galaxies. We find
that hypothesis 1 is most tenable. First, large galaxies in the process of a
merger formation would have accumulated too much mass in their centers (5e12
M_sun inside 2 kpc) to correspond to present day objects. Second, accretion by
dynamical friction occurs with a predictable density vs. radius slope, not seen
among the faint HDF objects. Since the dynamical friction time is roughly (1
Gyr), a steady-state should have been reached by redshift z < 5. Star-forming
regions within galaxies clearly present no dynamical problems. Since large
spirals would still appear as such in the HDF, we favor a scenario in which the
faint compact sources in the HDF are giant starforming regions within small
normal galaxies, such as Magellanic irregulars. Finally we checked that
reduction in mass-to-light from induced star-formation cannot alone explain the
luminosity overdensity.
