- 4513
- EARLIEST GALAXIES ?
Using the James Webb Space telescope researchers have become the first
to see the formation of three of the earliest galaxies in the universe, more
than 13,000,000,000 years ago.
--------------------------------- 4513 - EARLIEST GALAXIES ?
- For the first time in the history of
astronomy, researchers have witnessed the birth of three of the universe's
earliest galaxies, somewhere between 13.3 and 13.4 billion years ago.
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- Through the telescope, researchers were
able to see signals from large amounts of gas that accumulate and accrete onto
a mini-galaxy in the process of being built. While this is how galaxies are
formed according to theories and computer simulations, it had never actually
been witnessed.
-
- These are the first 'direct' images of
galaxy formation that we've ever seen. Whereas the James Webb has previously
shown us early galaxies at later stages of evolution, here we witness their
very birth, and the construction of the first star systems in the universe.
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- They estimate the birth of the three
galaxies to have occurred roughly 400-600 million years after the Big Bang, the
explosion that began it all. While that sounds like a long time, it corresponds
to galaxies forming during the first three to four percent of the universe's
13.8-billion-year overall lifetime.
-
- Shortly after the Big Bang, the universe was
an enormous opaque gas of hydrogen atoms, unlike today, where the night sky is
speckled with a blanket of well-defined stars.
During the few hundred million years after the Big Bang, the first stars
formed, before stars and gas began to coalesce into galaxies.
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- The birth of galaxies took place at a time
in the history of the universe known as the “Epoch of Reionization”, when the
energy and light of some of the first galaxies broke through the mists of
hydrogen gas.
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- It is these large amounts of hydrogen gas
that the researchers captured using the James Webb Space Telescope's infrared
vision. This is the most distant measurement of the cold, neutral hydrogen gas,
which is the building block of the stars and galaxies.
-
- We are constantly trying to push the limit
of how far out into the universe we can see.
One of the most fundamental questions that we humans have always asked
is: 'Where do we come from?'. Here, we piece together a bit more of the answer
by shedding light on the moment that some of the universe's first structures
were created.
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- Researchers were able to measure the
formation of the universe's first galaxies by using sophisticated models of how
light from these galaxies was absorbed by the neutral gas located in and around
them. This transition is known as the “Lyman-alpha transition”.
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- By measuring the light, the researchers
were able to distinguish gas from the newly formed galaxies from other gas.
These measurements were only possible thanks to the James Webb Space
Telescope's incredibly sensitive infrared spectrograph capabilities.
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- The universe began its "life"
about 13.8 billion years ago in an enormous explosion, the Big Bang. The event
gave rise to an abundance of subatomic particles such as quarks and electrons.
These particles aggregated to form protons and neutrons, which later coalesced
into atomic nuclei. Roughly 380,000 years after the Big Bang, electrons began
to orbit atomic nuclei, and the simplest atoms of the universe gradually
formed.
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- The first stars were formed after a few
hundred million years. And within the hearts of these stars, the larger and
more complex atoms that we have around us were formed.
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- Later, stars coalesced into galaxies. The
oldest galaxies known to us were formed about
400 million years after the
Big Bang. Our own solar system came into being about 4.6 billion years ago,
more than 9 billion years after the Big Bang.
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June 27, 2024 EARLIEST GALAXIES
? 4513
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--------------------- --- Thursday, June 27, 2024
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