Two teams of astronomers detected oxygen in the farthest galaxy ever observed, the Jades-GS-Z14-0. The discovery suggests that this galaxy matured much faster than expected: it is like finding a teenager where only babies would be expected.
New observations from two different teams of astronomers show that there is oxygen in the galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0the most distant ever found.
The old galaxy, formed at the beginning of the universe, was by NASA’s James Webb space telescope.
The light of this ancestral galaxy took more than 13.4 billion years to arrive to our solar system, which means that we are seeing jades-gs-z14-0 as it was when Universe was 290 million years old – 2% of your life time.
Jades-GS-Z14-0 had already left astronomers and intrigued cosmologists. It is a Very large and bright galaxywhich raises questions about how large structures can have been formed only a few hundred million years after Big Bang, note a.
Now, one published in Astronomy & Astrophysics and another, published in Astrophysical Journalsuggest that it will be necessary to update the theories about the evolution of galaxies currently accepted by the scientific community.
The two studies show traces of oxygen In Jades-GS-Z14-0 based on data from Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (soul) in Chile, which makes the galaxy more mature from the chemical point of view than astrophysicists would expect at this time in the life of the universe.
When the universe graduated, just the most – Hydrogen, Helium and Lithium – formed from the connection of protons and neutrons in an atomic nucleus and the capture of electrons.
Already the heavier elements, As is the case with oxygen, they only graduated After nuclear fusion in the nuclei of the starswho later died in supernova explosions.
The galaxies Usually their lives full of young stars beginwhich are mainly made of light elements. As stars evolve, they create the heaviest elements, which scatter through the galaxy that welcomes them after they die.
The researchers thought that, with 300 million yearsthe universe was still too young to have galaxies full of heavy elements. However, the two soul studies indicate that Jades-GS-Z14-0 has about 10 times more heavy elements than expected.
Find oxygen in a galaxy less than 300 million years after the birth of the universe suggests that these processes were underway much more time than the cosmologists predicted.
“It’s like Find a teenager where only babies would be expected“, Says the first author of the Astrophysical Journal article, Sander Schouwscandidate for doctorate at the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands.
“The results show that the galaxy graduated very quickly and is also ripen quicklyadding to a growing set of evidence that the formation of galaxies happens much faster than expected. ”
“Although the galaxy was originally discovered with the James Webb space telescope, It was necessary the soul to confirm and accurately determine its huge distance, ”says the teacher Rychard BouwensMember of the Leiden Observatory team.
“Isto shows a amazing synergy between soul and jwst To reveal the formation and evolution of the first galaxies, ”adds the researcher, published by ESO – European Southern Observatory.
The main author of the Astronomy & Astrophysics article, Stefano Carnianifrom Normal School Superiore de Pisa, Itália, showed “amazed” With the unexpected results, because they opened a new perspective on the early stages of the evolution of galaxies.
The discovery of the distant galaxy had already raised questions and intrigued astronomers, since the amount of starlight detected implied that the galaxy would have Several hundreds of millions of times the mass of the sun.
The images showed that the source of brightness that had been found would have more than 1600 light years in diametertherefore mainly coming from Young Stars and not from emissions near a black hole growing surplus.
“How can nature create nature Such a bright, massive galaxy In less than 300 million years? ”Asked Carniani, one of the scientists involved in the discovery.
More than answering this question, the two studies now published raise new questions. “Proof that a galaxy is already mature in the children’s universe raises questions about When and how the galaxies graduated“It now concludes the astronomer.
