Astronomers Have Detected a Galaxy Millions of Years Older Than Any Previously Observed

With nan help of nan James Webb Space Telescope, a squad of astronomers has surgery nan grounds for nan oldest, astir distant galaxy detected to day by humans.

In a preprint study, still awaiting adjacent reappraisal and publication successful a journal, astronomers picture this primitive galaxy, giving it nan sanction MoM z14. According to nan researchers’ calculations, this “cosmic miracle” originated 280 cardinal years aft nan Big Bang, beating nan grounds group by nan find conscionable past twelvemonth of JADES-GS-Z14-0, a postulation created 290 cardinal years aft nan root of nan universe.

To put these measurements successful context, nan existent property of nan beingness is estimated to beryllium 13.8 cardinal years. Earth has an approximate property of 4.543 cardinal years. No 1 expected nan James Webb Space Telescope to person nan imaginable to observe things truthful adjacent successful property to nan Big Bang conscionable 3 and a half years aft launch.

A little reminder astir distances comparative to space-time. Because ray travels astatine a finite velocity of 300 cardinal meters per second, and because abstraction is expanding, watching ray from very distant objects is balanced to seeing what they were for illustration agelong ago. For example, erstwhile we opportunity that MoM z14 is astir 13.5 cardinal years old, that intends you would person to recreation 13.5 cardinal years astatine nan velocity of ray to scope it. So far, location is nary constituent detected by a technological instrumentality farther away, and astatine nan aforesaid time, older, than this one.

The James Webb Space Telescope, pinch its expertise to adjacent heavy into distant space, allows america to study immoderate aspects of nan beingness successful its early stages. How does it do this? By infrared sensors. Due to nan description of nan universe, almost each nan galaxies we spot from Earth are moving distant from us. So, from our constituent of view, their ray appears to person a longer wavelength because it is stretched by this movement. We telephone this “redshift”: Their wavelengths are redder because they are longer, and truthful displacement towards nan reddish extremity of nan ray spectrum. The earlier an entity was created, and truthful nan farther distant it is, having expanded outwards for a longer play of time, nan greater nan redshift.

The James Webb Space Telescope was capable to find that MoM z14 is 50 times smaller than nan Milky Way, and besides detected nan beingness of nitrogen and c successful nan galaxy. This is important because, contempt being only 280 cardinal years older than nan Big Bang, this shows that MoM z14 does not beryllium to nan first procreation of galaxies formed, since stars successful these galaxies would beryllium made up only of hydrogen and helium, nan elements that predominantly made up nan early universe. Heavier elements only arrived later, aft being produced successful stars.

Can nan James Webb transverse that period and find nan first procreation of galaxies? Such discoveries could beryllium a agelong measurement off, but we person to support looking.

This communicative primitively appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.