- 4237 - WEBB NEW DISCOVERIES - the oldest galaxies? James Webb Space Telescope has discovered a cosmic 'peanut' and 'fluff ball' that happen to be two of the four oldest galaxies in the known universe. The second- and fourth-most distant galaxies ever seen have been confirmed using the James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam).
------------ 4237 - WEBB NEW DISCOVERIES - the oldest galaxies?
- JWST has
discovered two of the oldest and most distant galaxies in the known universe,
dating to just 330 million years after the Big Bang. These ancient objects, estimated to be the second and fourth most
distant galaxies ever detected, fall
just shy of the earliest known galaxy, named JADES-GS-z13-0, which was
previously spotted by JWST at around 300 million years after the dawn of time.
The light from all three of these immensely old galaxies traveled for more than
13,000,000,000 years to reach JWST's lens.
-
- The light from
these galaxies is ancient, about three times older than the Earth. It is only by their light that we can begin
to understand the exotic physics that governed the galaxies near the cosmic
dawn.
-
- The early universe
was crammed with stars 10,000 times the size of our sun. The galaxies in a region of space called
“Pandora's Cluster”, or “Abell 2744” is an immense cluster of galaxies
containing the equivalent mass of 4 trillion suns.
-
- Galaxy clusters
are the most massive structures in the universe bound by gravity. However, the
two newfound ancient galaxies weren't discovered within the cluster itself
,they were discovered behind it, thanks to a natural magnifying effect,
gravitational lensing. First predicted to exist by Albert Einstein,
gravitational lensing occurs when an ultra-massive object curves the space
around it, bending and magnifying light that passes nearby.
-
- The Pandora
Cluster's mass created a gravitational lens powerful enough to magnify the
light of the two galaxies, despite their being located many billions of
light-years behind Pandora.
-
- This zoomed-in view
revealed that the two ancient galaxies appear to be significantly bigger than
other galaxies observed at the same point in cosmic history. The galaxies were
big enough that the researchers could make out distinct shapes.
-
- One of the
galaxies appears elongated, almost like a peanut, and the other looks like a
fluffy ball. It is unclear if the
difference in size is due to how the stars formed or what happened to them
after they formed, but the diversity in the galaxy properties is really
interesting.
-
- The new galaxies
join a growing list of extremely ancient objects detected by JWST. Recently,
the telescope revealed the oldest active supermassive black hole in the known
universe, dating to about 450 million years after the Big Bang, as well as the
oldest evidence of organic molecules, which was located in a cloud roughly 12.3
billion light-years from Earth.
-
-
November 23, 2023
WEBB DISCOVERIES - the
oldest galaxies? 4237
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