Astronomers using The James Webb Space Telescope they found what they say are three of the oldest galaxies in our universe, actively forming when the universe was only 400 million to 600 million years old.
In JWST images, this galactic trio resembles fuzzy red smudges feeding on nearby helium and hydrogen. Over millions of years, it is these elements that keep such galaxies growing and help shape them into the familiar ellipses and spirals we see across the cosmos.
“You can say that these are the first ‘direct’ pictures formation of galaxies that we have ever seen,” lead author of the study Kasper Elm Heintzwho is an astrophysicist at the Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN) in Denmark, said v declaration. “While James Webb has previously shown us early galaxies in their later stages of evolution, here we are witnessing their very birth and thus the construction of the first star systems in the universe.”
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About 400,000 years after the Big Bang was our universe introduced into the dark. This happened after space has cooled enough from its formerly chaotic and burning self to allow for neutral hydrogen atoms create that enveloped the universe in an opaque primordial mist. This nebula rose about 1 billion years after the Big Bang, when light from the first generation stars flooded universe. Recent research has shown that dwarf galaxies formed during the first few hundred million years when the universe filled up and a surprisingly plentiful punch control this defogging process.
“This is a process that we see beginning in our observations,” study co-author Darach Watson said in a university statement. “These galaxies are like sparkling islands in a sea of ​​otherwise neutral, opaque gas,” Heintz added NASA statement.
The Legacy of the Sparkling Cosmic Triplet
JWST’s powerful infrared eye was able to capture how the light from the three observed galaxies was absorbed by the large, dense reservoirs of neutral hydrogen around them – a result that also showed that the gas is collecting and feeding the galaxies themselves. In fact, there is so much gas on the scene that galaxies have yet to give birth to their first stars. For stars to be born, parts of such primordial gas must coalesce into extremely dense pockets, which then fuel the formation of stellar bodies. It would probably take millions of years for the first generation of stars to be born in these galaxies.
Astronomers do not yet know how the gas is distributed among the centers of the galaxies in which it is also found supermassive black holes, as well as in the galactic edges. Not only can future observations help solve this puzzle, but it could also reveal whether the gas reservoirs of these galaxies are made entirely of primordial hydrogen, or whether they are already littered with heavier elements.
“It’s a process that we will continue to investigate until, hopefully, we are able to put even more pieces of the puzzle together,” said study co-author Gabriel Brammer of DAWN.
He noted that this discovery proves JWST exceeds its primary mission objectives. “Before Webb, it was impossible to get images and data of these distant galaxies,” he said. “Also, we had a good idea of ​​what we were going to find when we first glimpsed the data—we were almost discovering by eye.”
The findings are described in paper published May 23 in the journal Science.