A new galaxy tops the list of the farthest known galaxies. JADES-GS-z14-0, found by the James Webb Space Telescope, is located about 13.5 billion light-years away, and existed 300 million years after the Big Bang – 100 million years earlier than the previous distance record holder.
JADES-GS-z14-0 is not alone, as it was discovered in conjunction with the JADES-GS-z14-1 galaxy. In fact, they both hold the distance record, but the JADES-GS-z14-0 is the farthest of the two.
In addition to being closer than ever to the beginning of time, the galaxy is also exceptional because it is large and bright. Its diameter is about 1,600 light-years, and its mass is hundreds of millions more than the mass of the Sun. The Milky Way, with a diameter of 130,000 light-years and a solar mass of 1.54 trillion, is much larger. In the case of JADES-GS-z14-0, the surprise is that such large galaxies existed so early.
To find it, you also need a strong light. In today's galaxies, light is usually provided by matter falling into the central supermassive black hole. However, there is nothing in the protogalaxy, and most of the light comes from emerging or newborn stars.
They didn't expect that
As the universe expands, the wavelength of light traveling over vast distances expands with space and is redshifted. The distance and time that light travels can be determined from this transformation. In the case of JADES-GS-z14-0, the redshift was 14.32, while the previous record holder was 13.2.
The special feature of the James Webb Space Telescope is that, far from annoying heat sources and protected by a special shield, the NIRCam with its particularly sensitive infrared camera is able to detect even older and more distant weak light, that is, it provides a glimpse into the early universe.
James Webb began scientific work two and a half years ago. The successful opening of the tennis court-sized heat shield was the most critical part of the space telescope, which had been in development for a decade and a half and was beyond repair. Overall, the bottom line is that James Webb can take great images of Jupiter, Uranus and even exoplanets, but his real main mission is to power JADES-GS-z14-0 and JADES-GS-z14-1 to discover ancient galaxies. Likes
Together, these observations indicate that JADES-GS-z14-0 is not the galaxy predicted by theoretical models and computer simulations.
Jake Hilton of the University of Arizona, the galaxy's discoverer, noted. He added: “Based on the visible brightness, we can predict how it will evolve over cosmic time, and so far we have not found anything like this among the hundreds of galaxies examined in the framework of redshift research.”
We can see further
The primordial galaxy was discovered by Webb's predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, in a region called the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field in the constellation Chemnes at the end of 2003, containing about ten thousand galaxies. The light of many of them has been reaching us since the dawn of time, more than 13 billion years ago. According to Hilton, this shows that there is still a lot to explore here, and that astronomers may discover more new records in the coming years.
The early galaxies discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope in recent years are consistently inconsistent with what we expected based on previous theories, namely that the formation of early galaxies was much stronger.
Three scientific papers related to the discovery of JADES galaxies have been published. JADES-GS-z14-0's light would have been found even if it had been 10 times brighter, said UCLA professor Brant Robertson, who has explored the implications for galaxy evolution.
This means that we can still see earlier examples from the universe, even within the first 200 million years
Professor Robertson said.
(And the, Cambridge University)
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