Images captured by james webb telescope of the universe that existed 4.6 billion years. This is a finding that not only allows us to look back but also to know if there was life in other galaxies.
Look backand discover how the universe was made billions of years before our existence is what happened very recently with some photos that were released to the world.
new exoplanets(planets orbiting a star other than the sun), the composition of galaxies and stars that are born and others that die, were some of the observations that were revealed.
The images were captured by James Webb Telescope, the largest ever launched into space, and were revealed, from the White House, at an event attended by US President Joe Biden on July 11. The galaxies observed by the telescope are located 4.6 billion light years away.
This space mission was carried out in an integral manner with a team of scientists from the NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
What do these astronomical advances mean? The key question is how long it will take to know if there is life on any other planet
LOOK BACK. One of those responsible for the program that launched to the Webb telescope, John Mather –American astrophysicist, cosmologist and Nobel laureate– explained that after reconstructing the Big Bang, humanity still needed to know “what happened right after, how galaxies have grown, what has happened between then and today”. When he started this program, in 1995, there was no technology to answer these questions, but now there is this “time machine”, That’s what the Nobel Prize winner called it.
“We are ready to begin our journey back to the earliest days of our Universe with this world-class observatory,” he said. director scientist at the European Space Agency, Günther Hasinger
NOTICIAS consulted Argentine scientists to clarify this concept of scientific progress that the further it advances, the further back it looks.
Light is the entity with the highest speed in the universe (practically 300,000 km/sec). That is why the distances there, being so large, are not measured in km but in light years.
“One can observe an object thanks to the light we receive from it. For example, we observe the Sun because the light it emits travels 150 million km, exactly the distance that separates it from our own planet, Earth. To travel that distance of 150 million km, traveling at 300 thousand km per second, light takes about 8 minutes. Therefore, every time we see the Sun, we appreciate it as it was 8 minutes ago in time. In other words, for example, if the Sun stopped shining at 2:00 p.m., we would not know it until after 2:08 p.m. ”, he explains. Diego Bagu, graduated in Astronomy from the University of La Plata, specialist in Space Geodesy. researcher, teacher and scientific communicator.
As the objects in the universe (planets, stars, galaxies, black holes…) are further away, the light takes longer to arrive and that is how we see them as they were more and more far in the past, that is to say , in the time.
The extraordinary function of the Webb telescope, says Bagú, is that it will allow us to see stars and galaxies that are billions of light years away, and therefore, enjoy these astronomical wonders as they were billions of years ago.
“In one of the images that were made public, objects that are 4.6 billion light years away were observed, this indicates that objects were observed as they were 4.6 billion years ago. This image was obtained with more than 12 hours of exposure. If longer exposures are made, it will be possible to observe objects that are less bright, more distant and formed longer ago”, assures NOTICIAS, Olga Pintado, Ph.D. in Physics, astronomer, researcher at the CONICET and director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Astronomy and Space Sciences of the University of San Pablo in Tucumán.
If a star is at a distance of 200 light-years from Earth, looking at it we see what it was like 200 years ago. As we observe more distant objects we are observing older objects.
“If we take into account that the age of the universe is estimated at 13.7 billion years, it is expected that objects formed very shortly after the Big Bang occurred,” he clarifies.
Bagú says, returning to the galaxies captured by the super telescope, “it is likely that these galaxies no longer exist”, due to the number of light years that separate us.
Another difficult concept for the non-scientific community to assimilate is how the distance (time) in which these galaxies are found is calculated. “When the distances are so great -says the specialist- one takes into account, on the one hand, a mathematical physical model, of how the universe expands, and to this is added the data of the light that we receive”.
WATER IS LIFE. In addition to providing information about the Big Bang, these images could provide data on the possibility of life on other planets. The European Space Agency says in one of its published articles that, “The James Webb Space Telescope captured the distinctive signature of water, along with evidence of clouds and haze, in the atmosphere surrounding a hot, puffy gas giant planet orbiting a distant star similar to the Sun.
“For a planet to have such life, it must be solid, have an atmosphere, liquid water and be at a certain distance from the star so that its surface temperature is adequate,” says Pintado. One of the images made public is a spectrum of a planet’s atmosphere. “We are close to knowing which planets could have life to look for it in those places”, he concludes.
by Adriana Vanoli
