James Webb spots six massive galaxies that are so old they shouldn’t exist
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NASA’s new space super telescope was built to look back to the dawn of time and give us clues about how the universe came to be.
In less than a year, James Webb has already dazzled us with incredible images, but now he is challenging our understanding of the origin of galaxies.
That’s because the $10bn (£7.4bn) observatory has just detected six massive galaxies in the early universe that are so old they shouldn’t really exist.
“These objects are much more massive than anyone expected,” said Joel Leja, an assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State.
“We expected to find tiny, young, baby galaxies at this time, but we have discovered galaxies as mature as our own at what was previously understood as the dawn of the universe.”
Groundbreaking: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has just detected six massive galaxies in the early universe (pictured) that are so old they shouldn’t really exist. One of the sources (bottom left) could contain as many stars as our current Milky Way.
The researchers said their new discovery “pushes the limits of our understanding of cosmology” and suggests that galaxies grew massively faster than expected early in the universe’s history.
“We’ve been informally calling these objects ‘universe breakers,’ and so far they’ve been living up to their name,” Leja said.
He added that the galaxies were so large that they conflicted with 99 percent of cosmology models.
To account for the large mass means that these models would have to be changed, or astronomers would have to alter their fundamental understanding of how galaxies formed in the early universe.
Namely, that they started out as small clouds of stars and dust that gradually grew larger over time.
Whichever path scientists take, Leja said it would require a fundamental rethinking of how the universe came to be.
“The revelation that massive galaxy formation began very early in the history of the universe turns what many of us had thought to be established science upside down,” Leja said.
He said the international team of researchers “had no idea what we were going to find” when they looked at Webb’s first batch of data from the early universe.
‘It turns out that we found something so unexpected that it actually creates problems for science. It calls into question the whole picture of early galaxy formation,” added Leja.
He The new findings show that all six galaxies were as mature as our Milky Way when the universe was just 3 percent of its current age, around 500 to 700 million years after the Big Bang.
Webb is able to go back in time to 13.5 billion years, about two million years after the universe formed, because he has infrared detection instruments that are capable of detecting the light emitted by the oldest stars and galaxies.
Puzzling: The researchers said their new discovery suggests galaxies became massive faster than expected early in the universe’s history. These images are a composite of separate exposures taken by the James Webb Space Telescope using its NIRCam instrument.
“This is our first look so far, so it’s important that we keep an open mind about what we’re seeing,” Leja said.
“While the data indicates that they are likely galaxies, I think there is a real possibility that some of these objects turn out to be obscured supermassive black holes.
“Regardless, the amount of mass we discovered means that the known mass in stars in this period of our universe is up to 100 times greater than we had previously thought.
“Even if we cut the sample in half, it’s still a staggering change.”
The research was carried out using the spectroscopic data and the first full-color images of Webb, which were released by NASA in July of last year.
“When we got the data, they all started dipping and these massive things came up very quickly,” Leja said.
“We started modeling and trying to figure out what they were, because they were so big and shiny.
Time machine: Webb (pictured by an artist) can see up to 13.5 billion years back in time, around two million years after the universe formed, because he has infrared-sensing instruments that are capable of detect the light emitted by the oldest stars
“My first thought was that we had made a mistake and that we would just find it and move on with our lives. But we have yet to find that bug, despite many attempts.’
Leja said the way astronomers would confirm her team’s findings would be to take a spectrum image of massive galaxies.
This, he added, would provide data on the actual distances of galaxies and also the gases and other elements they are made of, which in turn would allow experts to create a clearer picture of how massive they really were.
“A spectrum will tell us immediately if these things are real or not,” Leja said.
It will show us how big they are, how far away they are. The funny thing is, we have all these things that we hope to learn from James Webb and this was nowhere near the top of the list.
“We’ve found something we never thought to ask the universe, and it happened much faster than I thought, but here we are.”
The discovery has been published in the journal Nature.
The James Webb Telescope: NASA’s $10 billion telescope is designed to detect light from the first stars and galaxies.
The James Webb Telescope has been described as a ‘time machine’ that could help unlock the secrets of our universe.
The telescope will be used to observe the first galaxies born in the early universe more than 13.5 billion years ago and to observe the sources of stars, exoplanets and even the moons and planets of our solar system.
The big telescope, which has already cost more than $7bn (£5bn), is seen as a successor to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope.
The James Webb Telescope and most of its instruments have an operating temperature of about 40 Kelvin, about minus 387 Fahrenheit (minus 233 Celsius).
It is the largest and most powerful orbiting space telescope in the world, capable of looking back 100-200 million years after the Big Bang.
The orbiting infrared observatory is designed to be about 100 times more powerful than its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA likes to think of James Webb as a successor to Hubble rather than a replacement, since the two will be working in tandem for a while.
The Hubble Telescope was launched on April 24, 1990 via the Space Shuttle Discovery from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
It circles the Earth at a speed of approximately 17,000 mph (27,300 kph) in a low Earth orbit at approximately 340 mile altitude.