- 3889 - GALAXIES - are too big, too early? - What do astronomers do when they find the Universe arrived too early and was bigger than calculations? Six galaxies were found to be too big, too early.
------------------------------ 3889 - GALAXIES - are too big, too early?
- In the first
data taken in 2022 with the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on the new James Webb
Space Telescope, found six galaxies from
a time when the Universe was only 3% of its current age, just 500-700 million
years after the Big Bang. While its incredible JWST saw these galaxies from so
long ago, the data also pose a mystery.
-
- These
galaxies should be mere infants, but instead they resemble galaxies of today,
containing 100 times more stellar mass than astronomers were expecting to see
so soon after the beginning of the Universe. If confirmed, this finding calls
into question the current thinking of galaxy formation and challenges most
models of cosmology.
-
- These
objects are way more massive than anyone expected. Astronomers
expected only to find tiny, young, baby galaxies at this point in time,
but we’ve discovered galaxies as mature as our own in what was previously
understood to be the dawn of the universe.
-
- The data
was taken by JWST as part of the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS)
program and was the first dataset released as part of the telescope’s early
release program, which is helping to showcase the new telescope’s observing
capabilities and allow the astronomical community to learn how to get the most
out of their observing time with the various instruments.
-
- NIRCam’s
infrared eyes are capable of detecting light that was emitted by the oldest
stars and galaxies, allowing scientists to see back in time roughly 13.5
billion years, near the beginning of the universe as we know it.
-
- The targeted
area of the sky for these sets of observations was a “blank” field – where no
stars or galaxies had ever been seen before — and overlapped with existing
Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging.
-
- While large
galaxies with stellar masses as high as 100 billion times that of the Sun have
been identified previously at approximately one billion years after the Big
Bang, it has been difficult to find massive galaxies at even earlier times.
-
- Within the
JWST early release observation data, the team searched for intrinsically high
redshifted galaxies in the first 500- 750 million years of cosmic history.
Redshift is a measure of the age of an astronomical object, as due to the
expansion of the Universe, light from distant objects shifts to wavelengths
towards the red end of the spectrum. The redder the image, the more distant the
object is.
-
- They found
six candidate massive galaxies at high redshifts (z = 6.5 and z = 9.1), with
masses up to ten billion times that of our Sun, including one galaxy with a
possible stellar mass 100 billion times that of the Sun. This is much bigger
than anticipated.
-
- This finding
calls the whole picture of early galaxy formation into question. The galaxies discovered are so massive that
they are in conflict with 99% of models for cosmology. Accounting for such a
high amount of mass would require either altering the models for cosmology or
revising the scientific understanding of galaxy formation in the early
universe.
-
- This is our
first glimpse back this far, so it’s important that we keep an open mind about
what we are seeing. While the data
indicates they are likely galaxies, I think there is a real possibility that a
few of these objects turn out to be obscured supermassive black holes.
-
- The plan is
to take more data on these galaxies with NIRCam, and which will provide more
details on how and distant these galaxies are and how far away they are. The more we know the more we find there is
more to learn. This keeps our brains
busy.
-
February 25, 2023 GALAXIES - are
too big, too early? 3889
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