James Webb telescope finds the most distant galaxy in the universe

The James Webb Space Telescope discovered galaxy The most distant one found to date formed during the initial expansion of the universe, just 320 million years after the Big Bang, according to research released Tuesday.

The further galaxiesand therefore younger, more difficult to detect, since their light signal is very weak.

The first results of the telescope James Webb (JWST), which became operational in July 2022, has identified numerous galaxies “candidates” in the infrared spectrum, whose wavelength is invisible to the human eye, allowing us to go back much further in time.

The Webb Telescope has powerful infrared observing capabilities that, combined with spectroscopy, which analyzes light from an object to determine its chemical elements, have “unequivocally” determined the existence of four galaxies.

All of them are located at the red end of the spectrum, that is, they are very far away, with an age of 300 to 500 million years after the Big Bang (which occurred 13.8 billion years ago), according to two published studies. , V Astronomy of nature.

At that time, the universe was only 2% of its current age, and it was going through what scientists call a period of reionization: after a period known as the “dark ages”, it became active again and began to produce a large number of stars.

galaxy furthest from JWSTdubbed JADES-GS-z13-0, formed “320 million years after the Big Bang” and its light is the most distant light observed by astronomers to date, said Stéphane Charlot of the Paris Institute of Astrophysics, one of the authors of the study. study.

“Feat”

The space telescope also confirmed the existence galaxy GM-z11about 450 million years after the Big Bang, and which has already been detected by the Hubble telescope.

Four galaxies observables are very small in mass—only a hundred million solar masses compared to 1.5 billion for the Milky Way.

Instead you galaxies they are “very active when it comes to forming stars, in proportion to their mass,” the astrophysicist clarifies.

Star formation occurs “at about the same rate as the Milky Way,” at a rate “surprising for that initial stage of the universe,” the researcher comments.

Those galaxies on the other hand, they are “very metal-poor,” a finding that confirms the usual theories of cosmology: the closer to the origin of the universe, the less time these stars had to form complex molecules.

This new JWST contribution is a “technological feat,” says Pieter van Dokkum, an astronomer at Yale University, in a commentary on the study.

“Every month” the telescope surpasses “the limits of research,” he explains.

In February James Webb discovered a group of six galaxies between 500 and 700 million years old after the Big Bang, apparently much more massive than expected. If the existence of these galaxies were confirmed by spectroscopy, it could cast doubt on some theories of the formation of the universe. (AFP)

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