A galaxy close to the beginning of the universe. They don’t understand why it looks like that

A group of astronomers has recorded and studied the JADES-GS-z14-0 galaxy, which formed just 290 million years after the Big Bang. Scientists were able to do this using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). One of the unique features of JWST is its ability to delve deeply into the origins of the universe. This tool allows us to see what happened during the first hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang. The first stars, galaxies and black holes were created at that time.

-Web tools are designed to enable the study of the first galaxies. In its first year of operation, the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) program has discovered hundreds of potential galaxies that may have formed during the first 650 million years after the Big Bang. In early 2023, we observed a galaxy with a redshift of 14, which is very exciting, but we were surprised by some of its properties. The object was surprisingly bright, something we did not expect from such a distant galaxy. Scientists reported that it was also close to another galaxy, and looked as if it was part of a larger structure. – During subsequent observations conducted in 2023, as part of the JADES Origins Field session, new data from the NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) instrument showed stronger evidence of a significant redshift. We knew we needed to understand the spectrum of galaxy light because everything we learned would be of enormous scientific value — either as another breakthrough in JWST’s exploration of the early universe or as a special and unusual galaxy in its middle age, they explained.

Earlier this year, scientists looked at galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0 for about 10 hours and undoubtedly determined its redshift to be more than 14, which is higher than the previous record holder, galaxy JADES-GS-z13-0 (13.2 ). ). Observations showed that the oldest galaxy to date has a diameter of 1.6 thousand light-years, indicating that the observed light comes mainly from young stars, and not just from the vicinity of the supermassive black hole at its center. The galaxy’s luminosity means that its mass is several hundred thousand times that of the Sun. Scientists wonder how such a large and bright galaxy could form in less than 300 million years. Its other properties also surprise researchers. For example, the galaxy is not blue as expected, which indicates that the illuminated part has become warmer due to the presence of dust. Light analysis also indicates the presence of large amounts of oxygen. The oxygen means the galaxy already has many generations of massive stars, which is difficult to explain given its formation so long ago. Together, these observations tell us that JADES-GS-z14-0 is nothing like the early galaxies predicted by theoretical models and computer simulations. Given the remarkable brightness of this source, we can make predictions about how it will grow over time. Scientists confirmed that so far, we have not found any similar objects among the hundreds of other galaxies that we observed at high redshift. Given the relatively small area of ​​sky we searched to find JADES-GS-z14-0, its discovery has profound implications for the expected number of bright galaxies we see in the early universe, as reported by another concurrent JADES study (Robertson et al., accepted for publication). Recently). It is likely that over the next decade, using the Webb Telescope, astronomers will find many more of these bright galaxies, perhaps formed at earlier times. They added that we are thrilled to see the extraordinary diversity of galaxies that existed during the cosmic dawn.

The researchers’ findings have not yet been reviewed.