COSMOS MAGAZINE
JWST image showing the location of galaxy JADES-GS-z14-.0. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Brant Robertson, Ben Johnson, Sandro Tacchella, Phill Cargile.
JADES-GS-z14-0 is the most distant confirmed galaxy ever found.
This image shows the precise location in the night sky of the galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/S. Carniani et al./S. Schouws et al/JWST: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Brant Robertson (UC Santa Cruz), Ben Johnson (CfA), Sandro Tacchella (Cambridge), Phill Cargile (CfA).
New observations from 2 different teams of astronomers shows that the galaxy has oxygen, making scientists rethink (again!) how galaxies formed in the early universe.
Its light took more than 13.4 billion years to reach our solar system – so we are seeing JADES-GS-z14-0 as it was when the universe was 290 million years old, or about 2% of the universe’s lifetime.
The ancient galaxy was first discovered last year by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
Artist's impression of stars 100 million years after the Big Bang. Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva/Spaceengine.
JADES-GS-z14-0 already had astronomers and cosmologists scratching their heads. It is a very large, bright galaxy, prompting questions about how such sizable structures could have formed just a couple of hundred million years after the Big Bang.
New studies show traces of oxygen in JADES-GS-z14-0 based on data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile.
This makes the galaxy more chemically mature than astrophysicists would expect at this time in the universe’s life.
The unexpected results have opened a new view on the first phases of galaxy evolution.
“The results show the galaxy has formed very rapidly and is also maturing rapidly, adding to a growing body of evidence that the formation of galaxies happens much faster than was expected.”
“It is like finding an adolescent where you would only expect babies,”
Says first author of the Astrophysical Journal paper Sander Schouws, a PhD candidate at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands.