Astronomers Have Found the Earliest and Most Distant Galaxy Yet (nytimes.com) 38
An anonymous reader shares a report: Since the James Webb Space Telescope began operating two years ago, astronomers have been using it to leapfrog one another millions of years into the past, back toward the moment they call cosmic dawn, when the first stars and galaxies were formed. Last month, an international team doing research as the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey, or JADES, said it had identified the earliest, most distant galaxy yet found -- a banana-shaped blob of color measuring 1,600 light-years across. It was already shining with intense starlight when the universe was in its relative infancy, at only 290 million years old, the astronomers said.
The new galaxy, known as JADES-GS-z14-0, is one of a string of Webb discoveries, including early galaxies and black holes, that challenge conventional models of how the first stars and galaxies formed. "This discovery proves that luminous galaxies were already in place 300 million years after the Big Bang and are more common than what was expected," the researchers wrote in a paper posted to an online physics archive. "Galaxy formation models will need to address the existence of such large and luminous galaxies so early in cosmic history," said the authors, who were led by Stefano Carniani, a professor at the university Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy.
The galaxy was first spotted during a deep space survey with the Webb's Near Infrared Camera, one of the telescope's workhorse instruments. Within a patch of southern sky known as the Jades Origin Field, which is about a quarter of the size of a full moon, scientists found 11 galaxies that seemed to date from when the universe was less than 400 million years old -- far more than they had expected. Subsequent studies by Dr. Carniani and his colleagues with the telescope's infrared spectrograph revealed that the wavelength of light from JADES-GS-z14-0 had been stretched more than 15-fold by the expansion of the universe (a redshift of 14 to use astronomical jargon), similar to the way a siren's pitch becomes lower as it speeds away. That means light has been coming toward us for 13.5 billion years, since shortly after the universe began. (The universe is about 13.8 billion years old, according to cosmological calculations.) The light from the galaxy is spread over a diffuse region, which indicates that the glow was coming from stars, not the gullet of a black hole. Its brightness corresponded to the output of hundreds of millions of suns, an astonishing number to have formed and assembled in only 290 million years.
The new galaxy, known as JADES-GS-z14-0, is one of a string of Webb discoveries, including early galaxies and black holes, that challenge conventional models of how the first stars and galaxies formed. "This discovery proves that luminous galaxies were already in place 300 million years after the Big Bang and are more common than what was expected," the researchers wrote in a paper posted to an online physics archive. "Galaxy formation models will need to address the existence of such large and luminous galaxies so early in cosmic history," said the authors, who were led by Stefano Carniani, a professor at the university Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy.
The galaxy was first spotted during a deep space survey with the Webb's Near Infrared Camera, one of the telescope's workhorse instruments. Within a patch of southern sky known as the Jades Origin Field, which is about a quarter of the size of a full moon, scientists found 11 galaxies that seemed to date from when the universe was less than 400 million years old -- far more than they had expected. Subsequent studies by Dr. Carniani and his colleagues with the telescope's infrared spectrograph revealed that the wavelength of light from JADES-GS-z14-0 had been stretched more than 15-fold by the expansion of the universe (a redshift of 14 to use astronomical jargon), similar to the way a siren's pitch becomes lower as it speeds away. That means light has been coming toward us for 13.5 billion years, since shortly after the universe began. (The universe is about 13.8 billion years old, according to cosmological calculations.) The light from the galaxy is spread over a diffuse region, which indicates that the glow was coming from stars, not the gullet of a black hole. Its brightness corresponded to the output of hundreds of millions of suns, an astonishing number to have formed and assembled in only 290 million years.
"an astonishing number" (Score:3)
Why astonishing after only 290 million years? The universe would have been a much smaller place. Having so many stars clump together in such a small space in a relatively short period of time seems very reasonable to me.
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what's astonishing is that we can look that far into the distance-past of space-time.
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Agreed
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There are currently some theories that the universe is over twice as old as the current estimate.
I personally thought the JWT would never get off the ground, but it's shattering our current understanding almost daily now.
Re: "an astonishing number" (Score:2)
The only thing it "shatters" is our current understanding of star and galaxy formation so early on. The Big Bang and everything else you seem to imply does just great.
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There are currently some theories that the universe is over twice as old as the current estimate.
I personally thought the JWT would never get off the ground, but it's shattering our current understanding almost daily now.
It's pretty easy to see why we think the universe may actually be older than previous estimates. The more powerful our observational platforms become, the more it seems we may have missed a mark somehow. Granted, with how much remains to be sorted out when it comes to astrophysics, the 13.5 billion year history of the universe is as much a really, really careful guess using "what we know." We just haven't figured out if what we know is 95% of astrophysics, or .003% or somewhere in between. Based on the amou
Re: "an astonishing number" (Score:2)
If anything exciting is going on in (astro)physics these days, it's G-2 and the Hubble Tension:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://cerncourier.com/a/expl... [cerncourier.com]
Everything else I've seen is clickbait from lone weirdo's having their shot at fame.
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Stars take time to form. Having so many stars already formed after "only" 290M years is something very interesting.
Einstein and Lucas for the win! (Score:3)
So the light astronomers are seeing now came from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
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this is the way.
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Well played!
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So the light astronomers are seeing now came from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
Don't get too excited, I heard they had space witches there that build homes out of flammable stones...
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Nah, that's nothing, you are behind, now they're headbutting lightsabers.
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Shouldn't it be large? (Score:2)
Use of tense (Score:2)
Re: Use of tense (Score:2)
If you're looking at your screen from 2ft away, that's looking 2 nanoseconds into the past and everything further out is longer in the past. So your "now" is very relative.
Distances, for example, are very ambiguous in an expanding universe. The only thing that is non-ambiguous is redshift, and as per Hubble's law, light travel time.
In that sense, there is no "now." A galaxy at redshift 1 means the light we detect has doubled in wavelength.
But if the observable universe was half as large and we see the galax
is that the "centre" of the BB? (Score:2)
i.e. where the BB occurred?
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Everywhere is the center of the BB. The space between each of three dimensions increased, out ot infinity .. there is no center.
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Re:is that the "centre" of the BB? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't see how that follows. I think I understand what youre saying. Spacetime itself expanded ... so how does that preclude a centre?
Imagine you take a perfect balloon and completely empty it of all content such that it occupies a point with effectively zero volume.
Now inflate that balloon until it is a sphere one meter in diameter.
Mark a few points on the balloon's surface.
Inflate the balloon until it is a sphere two meters in diameter.
Note that the distance between every point and every other point has increased because space itself has expanded.
Note that there never was a center, from the perspective of any of the points you've marked.
Now imagine the same thing happening to three-dimensional space instead of just a surface... because that's nothing like the reality of the situation, but at least it felt good to pretend to have a grasp on physics as a layperson for a fleeting moment.
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Here's where I'm stuck. If these galaxies are only 290 million yo. So that's nearly the beginning of time. so that was approx 13 B years ago. We are looking back in time. So the universe is much smaller ? no? in terms of volume, if it is expanding, then by definition it would occupy a smaller volume at any time in the past. So my logic leads me to believe that they would be closer to the actual
Re: is that the "centre" of the BB? (Score:2)
The event was everywhere all at once.
Imagine an alien living on a planet around one of those distant stars looking at back at us, 13.7billion years after that event. They would (statistically) see the same here as we are witnessing over there.
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I still don't see how that means there is no "centre"
Apparently there was a BB. It originated as a singularity. Whereever that was... is the centre.
Nobody listens to me, but I'm gonna say the "cosmological principle" is suspect here.
You get into philosopy to explain some of this stuff, then it's just anybody's guess, imho.
Re: is that the "centre" of the BB? (Score:2)
What's the center of an infinite series? In the same way, there is no center to the big bang.
The cosmological principle states the universe is statistically the same, everywhere, once you look at larger volumes, say 10^9 light years across.
Or lets assume the earth were one large forest. You could walk endlessly and there is just forest everywhere. Which tree is the middle one?
It doesn't make sense to speak of or search for the middle.
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Also, the surface of "earth as one large forest" or the "inflating balloon" ideas are 2d metaphors to make it easier to understand, not the reality of 3d space.
The universe started as a singularity, a point. Then exploded in all directions. How can there not be a centre?
I have a problem with the cosmological principle. Sure the universe is big. And *as far as we can tel
Re: is that the "centre" of the BB? (Score:2)
The big bang wasn't an explosion into any existing space. It was an explosion of space. Eternal inflation aside, it happened everywhere at once and created the 4D spacetime we live in now.
The CMB is a great piece of evidence for that: had there been different temperatures on different ends, we'd have seen some direction. But it really is the same, everywhere, at a redshift z=1100(?).
From that, theoreticians deduce that, for any sensible deviations to take effect, the whole size of the universe has to be at
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Sure, but there is an assumption of uniformity, doesn't that imply the universe of spacetime is spherical, it started as a point which is modeled after a sphere. So space is created in all directions simultaneously, at the same speed, so.. we are inside a sphere....it seems. That really still sounds like a boundary is out
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There is a centre, it's just not on the surface of the balloon. It's at a point perpendicular to every point on the surface.
What that means in a cosmological model is an exercise left to the reader.
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I mean to say, the space between everything in each of the three dimensions increased. For something to be at the center, that implies there's an edge. There's no edge (as far as anyone can tell). But, it looks like the space between every object, and by "space between" I mean as defined as the amount of time light takes to travel between any two objects, within an infinitely sized universe, increased. We can measure the speed at which objects are moving away from us using their redshift, when you reverse b
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Oddly enough, the Milky Way is about the same age. So if an astronomer in JADES-GS-z14-0 was to look back toward us, they would discover a galaxy that was several hundred million years old. They would, of course, see the Milky Way in its earliest years. Not as it appears today. So, who is in "the center"?
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topologically if you have n
Re: is that the "centre" of the BB? (Score:2)
We can measure the CMB, so it cant be infinity away from us. So which is it? theCMB represents a boundary or ... not.
The CMB represents the edge of the original Big Bang plasma. Which was radiating until it condensed into atoms (mostly Hydrogen) and became transparent. It is also moving away at a good fraction of the speed of light. Which is why it is red-shifted into the microwave. The "inner edge" of that shell is about 13.8 billion ly from us, minus the age of the original ionized gas ball from the BB. The "outer edge"? Theoretically it could be out at the BB age times the speed of light.
If we are in an infinite/unbouned universe.. then couldn't there be things further away than we can see?
Maybe. Other universes outside of our light cone. A bunch of Big Bangs, like bubbles in a fizzy drink. Undetectable outside of our light cone, unless ...
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there it is. the edge. so we are inside a sphere of spacetime. I wonder where the centre is. I'm betting we're rotating around it, and according greater minds, much greater, they say that has to be subtracted out of the redshift now.
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The CMB is everywhere. It's like looking through water. Look through a glass of water, it appears to be clear, but look through a swimming pool's worth of it, you can see the water.
Analogue TV "snow", or the quiet hiss of static that you hear on a radio tuned to no station, is caused by random electromagnetic energy hitting the antenna. About 2% of it is the CMB.