- 4242 - GALAXIES - oldest ever seen? 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 (UNCOVER z-13 and UNCOVER z-12) have been confirmed using the James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam).
-------------------------- 4242 - GALAXIES - oldest ever seen?
- They are shown as
near-infrared wavelengths of light that have been translated to visible-light
colors. These are 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, 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 billion 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. This proves that photons do not
decay with time.
-
- The early universe
was crammed with stars 10,000 times the size of our sun. The newfound galaxies are in a region of
space called Pandora's Cluster, or Abell 2744 — 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 called
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.
-
- 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.
-
- Previously
discovered galaxies at these distances are point sources, they appear as a dot
in our images. But, one of ours
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 27, 2023
GALAXIES -
oldest ever seen? 4242
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