- 4370 - JAMES WEBB TELESCOPE - detects ice, maybe life? The James Webb Telescope detected the coldest ice in the known universe, and, it contains the building blocks of life. These observations of icy molecules will help scientists understand how habitable planets form.
--------- 4370 - JAMES WEBB TELESCOPE - detects ice maybe life?
- Scientists have
observed and measured the coldest ice in the deepest reaches of an interstellar
molecular cloud to date. The frozen molecules measured minus 440 degrees
Fahrenheit.
-
- Molecular clouds,
made up of frozen molecules, gasses and dust particles, serve as the birthplace
of stars and planets, including habitable planets. The JWST’s infrared camera was used to
investigate a molecular cloud called “Chameleon I”, about 500 light-years from
Earth.
-
- Within the dark,
cold cloud, the team identified frozen molecules like carbonyl sulfur, ammonia,
methane, methanol and more. These molecules will someday be a part of the hot
core of a growing star, and possibly part of future exoplanets. They also hold the building blocks of
habitable worlds: “carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulfur”, a molecular
cocktail known as “COHNS”.
-
- Our results provide
insights into the initial, dark chemistry stage of the formation of ice on the
interstellar dust grains that will grow into the centimeter-sized pebbles from
which planets form.
-
- Stars and planets
form within molecular clouds like Chameleon I. Over millions of years, the
gases, ices and dust collapse into more massive structures. Some of these
structures heat up to become the cores of young stars. As the stars grow, they
sweep up more and more material and get hotter and hotter.
-
- Once a star forms,
the leftover gas and dust around it form a disk. This matter starts to collide, sticking
together and eventually forming larger bodies. One day, these clumps may become
planets. Even habitable ones like ours.
-
- The JWST sent back
its first images in July 2022, and scientists are currently using the $10
billion telescope's instruments to identify molecules within Chameleon I.
Researchers used light from stars lying beyond the molecular cloud. As the light shines towards us, it is
absorbed in characteristic ways by the dust and molecules inside the cloud.
These absorption patterns can then be compared to known patterns determined in
the lab.
-
- The team also found
more complex molecules they can't specifically identify. But the finding proves
that complex molecules do form in molecular clouds before they're used up by
growing stars.
-
- Identification of
complex organic molecules, like methanol and potentially ethanol, also suggests
that the many star and planetary systems developing in this particular cloud
will inherit molecules in a fairly advanced chemical state.
-
- They didn't find as
high a concentration of the molecules as they were expecting in a dense cloud
like Chameleon I. How a habitable world like ours got its icy COHNS is still a
major question among astronomers. One theory is that COHNS were delivered to
Earth via collisions with icy comets and asteroids.
-
- This is just the
first in a series of spectral snapshots that we will obtain to see how the ices
evolve from their initial synthesis to the comet-forming regions of
protoplanetary disks.
-
- This will tell us
which mixture of ices, and therefore which elements, can eventually be
delivered to the surfaces of terrestrial exoplanets or incorporated into the
atmospheres of giant gas or ice planets.
-
- The James Webb
Space Telescope also spotted six gigantic galaxies, each roughly the size of
our own Milky Way, that formed at a very fast pace, taking shape just 500
million years after the Big Bang.
-
- The Telescope has
discovered a group of galaxies from the dawn of the universe that are so
massive they shouldn't exist. The six
gargantuan galaxies, which contain almost as many stars as the Milky Way
despite forming only 500 to 700 million years after the Big Bang, have been
dubbed "universe breakers”.
-
- You just don't
expect the early universe to be able to organize itself that quickly. These
galaxies should not have had time to form.
We don't know exactly when the first clumps of stars began to merge into
the beginnings of the galaxies we see today, but cosmologists previously
estimated that the process began slowly taking shape within the first few
hundred million years after the Big Bang.
-
- Currently accepted
theories suggest that 1 to 2 billion years into the universe's life, these
early protogalaxies reached adolescence, forming into dwarf galaxies that began
devouring each other to grow into ones like our own.
-
- Because light
travels at a fixed speed through the vacuum of space, the deeper we look into
the universe, the more remote light we intercept and the further back in time
we see. By using JWST to peer roughly 13.5 billion years into the past, the
astronomers found that enormous galaxies had already burst into life very
quickly after the Big Bang, when the universe was just 3% of its current age.
-
- The galaxies are so
massive, they are in tension with 99 percent of the models for cosmology. This means that either the models need to be
altered, or scientific understanding of galaxy formation requires a fundamental
rethink.
-
- The Milky Way
forms about one to two new stars every year.
Some of these galaxies would have to be forming hundreds of new stars a
year for the entire history of the universe. If even one of these galaxies is real,
it will push against the limits of our understanding of cosmology.
-
- While the data
indicates they are likely galaxies, there is a real possibility that a few of
these objects turn out to be obscured supermassive black holes. Regardless, the
amount of mass we discovered means that the known mass in stars at this period
of our universe is up to 100 times greater than we had previously thought. Even
if we cut the sample in half, this is still an astounding change.
-
- Previous imaging
of the early universe by the Hubble Space Telescope didn't detect the giant
galaxies, but JWST is about 100 times more powerful than Hubble. The $10 billion JWST launched to a
gravitationally stable location beyond the moon's orbit , known as a Lagrange
point, in December 2021.
-
- The space
observatory was designed to read the earliest chapters of the universe's
history in its faintest glimmers of light which have been stretched to infrared
frequencies from billions of years of travel across the expanding fabric of
space-time.
-
- The astronomers say
their next step will be to take a spectrum image of the giant galaxies
providing them with accurate distances and a better idea of the chemical makeup
of the anachronistic monsters hiding at the beginning of the universe.
-
-
February 29, 2024 JAMES
WEBB - detects ice, maybe life? 4370
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is
interested. --------
--- Some reviews are
at: -------------- http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
-- email feedback,
corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
--- to: ------
jamesdetrick@comcast.net
------ “Jim Detrick” -----------
--------------------- ---
Thursday, February 29, 2024 ---------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment