’13 billion light-years away: NASA’s James Webb Telescope detects mysterious emission from deep space – WION
Produced by Tarun MishraAstronomers have successfully detected emissions from one of the most distant galaxies known, located over 13 billion light-years from Earth. The discovery offers new insights into the early universe.The achievement resulted from a collaboration between the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The combined efforts of these advanced instruments made it possible to observe a distant galaxy, GHZ2 (GLASS-z12), dating back to just 400 million years after the Big Bang.The emission detected came from excited atoms of hydrogen and oxygen, marking the first time such emissions have been identified in galaxies at this extreme distance. This opens new avenues for studying the conditions of the early universe.The team focused their observations on GHZ2, a galaxy at a redshift of z=12.333, which was found to be undergoing intense star formation. The galaxy is notably small in size yet holds a mass several hundred million times that of the Sun.
These findings contribute to understanding galaxy formation during the universe’s infancy. The study suggests GHZ2 is experiencing bursts of star formation in unusual conditions, with a population of short-lived, massive stars.Further analysis of GHZ2 revealed that the galaxy has a relatively low metallicity compared to most studied galaxies. This suggests the presence of elements that formed early in the universe, providing valuable data for studying the evolution of cosmic structures.Tom Bakx from Chalmers University highlighted the importance of this discovery in shaping future research on primordial objects. The collaboration between ALMA and JWST exemplifies the growing capabilities of modern astronomy to uncover and understand the formation and evolution of galaxies in the early universe.
