Photo: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/B. Robertson/B. Johnson/S. Tacchella/P. Cargile
As best as we can tell with the tools at our disposal, the Universe is 13.7 billion years old, give or take 200 million years. We have no clue what came before the Big Bang sparked it into existence, but thanks to advancements in technology, we're getting so good at seeing places so distant and old it kind of gets me hopeful we'll be able to witness the moment of creation itself one day.
It will soon be three years since the most expensive and complex telescope was launched into space. It's called the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and many times over it managed to astonish even its detractors with its findings.
There are several organizations and people who take turns using the Webb and its data to advance their science, but this month's hot bit of Universe news comes from the people looking at what's generally described as the cosmic dawn. That would be the first hundred million years after the Universe was born.
It was during that time that the first galaxies were born, and having a look at them might help us get a better understanding of how things on such a scale work. Given the huge distances involved, that wasn't really possible until now.
Webb changed all that, and thanks to one of its instruments, the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), it managed to snap some images of what is presently described as the most distant galaxy we know of and, consequently, the oldest.
They call it JADES-GS-z14-0, in part because it was discovered as part of a Webb program called JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES). More importantly, it's believed it was born just 290 million years after the Big Bang.
To put that into perspective, it means the light we're now seeing in the Webb images comes from roughly 13.4 billion years in the past. That makes the place the record holder for the most distant known galaxy and almost as old as the Universe itself, if we judge age from a cosmic perspective.
The people who worked on discovering this most distant galaxy that we know of say their findings have not been through a peer-review process yet, but that doesn't make what we're seeing before us any less spectacular.
You can see the JADES-GS-z14-0 in the main image of this piece, in a pullout that focuses on it, but if you look at the larger picture you really start to get a sense of just how capable Webb is and how massive our Universe. That's because every single cluster of light in there (minus the spiked lights, which are stars) are galaxies as well - and there are thousands of them in this image alone.
There are several organizations and people who take turns using the Webb and its data to advance their science, but this month's hot bit of Universe news comes from the people looking at what's generally described as the cosmic dawn. That would be the first hundred million years after the Universe was born.
It was during that time that the first galaxies were born, and having a look at them might help us get a better understanding of how things on such a scale work. Given the huge distances involved, that wasn't really possible until now.
Webb changed all that, and thanks to one of its instruments, the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), it managed to snap some images of what is presently described as the most distant galaxy we know of and, consequently, the oldest.
They call it JADES-GS-z14-0, in part because it was discovered as part of a Webb program called JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES). More importantly, it's believed it was born just 290 million years after the Big Bang.
To put that into perspective, it means the light we're now seeing in the Webb images comes from roughly 13.4 billion years in the past. That makes the place the record holder for the most distant known galaxy and almost as old as the Universe itself, if we judge age from a cosmic perspective.
The people who worked on discovering this most distant galaxy that we know of say their findings have not been through a peer-review process yet, but that doesn't make what we're seeing before us any less spectacular.
You can see the JADES-GS-z14-0 in the main image of this piece, in a pullout that focuses on it, but if you look at the larger picture you really start to get a sense of just how capable Webb is and how massive our Universe. That's because every single cluster of light in there (minus the spiked lights, which are stars) are galaxies as well - and there are thousands of them in this image alone.
Google News