According to a report, prepared in collaboration between the POT and prestigious universities, it is indicated that the newly discovered galaxy would have been created during the initial expansion of the universe. It is done, it is estimated that it happened ago 320 million yearsafter the big Bangaccording to studies released on Wednesday, April 5.
The first results of the telescope James Webb (J.W.S.T.), which went live in July 2022, identified numerous galaxies observed in the infrared spectrum. The technology consists of a wavelength invisible to the human eye that allows us to go back much further in time, although the further away the galaxies are, the more difficult they are to detect, since their light signal is very low.
However, the telescope has a powerful infrared observation capability, which, combined with spectroscopy, analyzes the light coming from an object to determine its chemical elements. In this way, the existence of several galaxies was located. This space device was launched out of the atmosphere in December 2021 and, since then, it has made several discoveries for science.
The galaxies that were located are located at the red end of the spectrum, that is, they are very far away, with an age ranging between 300 and 500 million years after the Big Bang, according to studies published in Nature Astronomy. The “big bang,” which gave birth to the universe, is estimated to have occurred 13.8 billion years ago. After that time, space went through what scientists call a period of reionization.
The concept of reionization refers to the transition period of what was known as “dark ages”, becoming active again and producing a large number of stars. The most distant galaxy located by the mission in these hours, was baptized JADES-GS-z13-0. One of the study authors, Stéphane Charlot of the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris, In a report for AFP he explained: “It was formed 320 million years after the Big Bang and its light is the most distant observed to date by astronomers.”
The Webb was developed to see all its targets in a very particular way: in the infrared spectrum. Its predecessor, the Hubble telescope, had been designed to be predominantly sensitive to light in the optical or visible wavelengths, the same type of light that we detect with our eyes.
There is a history of similar discoveries by space telescopes. The existence of the galaxy GM-z11, about 450 million years after the Big Bang, had been detected by the hubble telescope. The galaxies being observed are very low-massive: barely a hundred million solar masses, compared to the 1.5 trillion of the Milky Way. Instead, they are “very active when it comes to forming stars, in proportion to their mass,” explained the French astrophysicist.
“The formation of the stars is taking place at the same rate, approximately, as the Milky Way. Amazing in that early stage of the universe,” added Charlot. On the other hand, these galaxies are “very metal poor”, a discovery that confirms the usual theories of cosmology: the closer to the origin of the universe, the less time these stars had to form complex molecules.
Last February, the James Webb located a group of six galaxies 500 to 700 million years old after the Big Bang, apparently much more massive than expected. If the existence of these galaxies were confirmed by spectroscopy, that could call into question some of the theories about the formation of the universe.
The Webb Space Telescope is an international mission led by NASA, ESA and the Canadian space agency. It was finally placed 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, cost 10,000 million dollars and took three decades to build. The JWST mission was launched aboard the Ariane rocket from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana, with the aim of searching for the first stars that illuminated the cosmos. Equipped with a 6.5 meter wide mirror and four highly sensitive instruments, Webb attempts to detect light that has been traveling through the vastness of space for more than 13.5 billion years.
AFP Source
by RN
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