The James Webb Space Telescope finds the most distant galaxy ever discovered by humans. It appeared in the first 290 million years after the Big Bang.
For the past two years, scientists have been using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). To explore what astronomers call the “cosmic dawn,” or the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang and the birth of the first galaxies.
These galaxies provide important insights into how gas, stars, and black holes changed when the universe was very young.
Scientists are finding more planets suitable for supporting life, the closest to Earth that I have ever seen!
Detection of the image of the “Hand of God” in the constellation A posteriori, 1,300 light-years away from Earth.
James Webb captures the clearest image of the “mane” of the Horsehead Nebula
In October 2023 and January 2024, an international team of astronomers used GEMS Webb to observe distant galaxies. It is part of the Webb Advanced Extragalactic Survey (JADES) project using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRSpec).
They found the spectrum of one galaxy interesting. They named the galaxy “JADES-GS-z14-0.”
Let's remind each other again that physicists and astronomers use the so-called “red shift” to see which luminous objects in space are moving away from Earth.
These lights can be separated into many different “spectra” or sub-colors, each with a different color. The “wavelengths” are different, with “red” being the color with the longest wavelength.
Therefore, when lighter objects move away from Earth the more light we can see, the longer it takes to travel. equals light with increasing wavelength. We will see that the body becomes redder.
To sum it up and make it easy to understand: the farther away an object is, the red we will see it.
Astronomers also created a numerical value for redshift, called the z-value, to indicate how far an object is from us. How long does it take for light from that object to reach Earth?
If it takes light 1 million years to travel to Earth, then the z value is 0.0000715, or if the z value is 1, it takes 7.731 billion years for the light to travel, and if it is 10, it means the object took 13.184 billion years. Years of travel while the universe is about 13.8 billion years old.
And the galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0 that scientists found has a redshift of about 14, and when it was calculated, they found that it is a galaxy that formed 290 million years after the Big Bang! Breaking the previous record for the galaxy JADES-GS-z13-0, which has a redshift value of Z = 13.2.
The research team stated: “In January 2024, NIRSpec observed the galaxy. JADS-GS-z14-0 This took approximately 10 hours and that was when the spectra were first processed. There is clear evidence that this galaxy actually has a redshift of 14.32, breaking the previous record.
“Seeing this spectrum is very exciting for the whole team,” they added. “Given the mystery surrounding this light source, this discovery is not just a new distance record for our team. The most important properties of JADS-GS-z14-0 are at this distance. We know that this The galaxy must be very bright from the inside. From the aforementioned image, the source was found to be more than 1,600 light-years across, proving that most of the light we see comes from young stars not from radiation near a supermassive black hole This suggests that galaxies have a mass hundreds of millions of times greater than our Sun!
But this raises an important question: How could nature create such a bright and large galaxy in less than 300 million years?
“All these surveys tell us that JADS-GS-z14-0 is different from the types of galaxies that theoretical models and computer simulations predict would exist in the early universe,” the team said.
“Given the observed brightness of the source we can predict how it will grow on cosmic time scales,” they said. “So far we have not found anything similar in hundreds of other galaxies with high redshifts in our survey.”
Compiled from NASA
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