Astronomers have discovered a galaxy millions of years larger than anything previously noticed

With help Subordinate James Web telescope for spaceA team of astronomers cut the record for the oldest and most far away Galaxy Discover so far by humans.

In the preprint studyHe is still awaiting peer and publishing review in a magazine, astronomers describe this primitive galaxy, giving her the name of my mother Z14. According to the researchers’ accounts, this “cosmic miracle” arose 280 million years after the big victory, overcoming the record recorded by the discovery last year only from Jades-GS-Z14-0, a galaxy that established 290 million years out of the universe.

To put these measurements in the context, it is estimated that the current age of the universe is 13.8 billion years. The Earth is 4.543 billion years. Nobody expected that the James Web telescope for space had the ability to monitor things close to age to the big explosion after only three and a half years of launch.

A brief reminder about the distances in relation to time. Since the light travels at a limited speed of 300,000 meters per second, and because the space is expanding, monitoring the light is very distant things equivalent to seeing what it was long ago. For example, when we say that Mom Z14 is about 13.5 billion years old, this means that you will have to travel 13.5 billion years at the speed of light to reach its destination. To date, there is no point that is discovered by a scientific tool away, and at the same time, larger than this.

The James Web telescope, with its ability to look at the distant space, allows us to study some aspects of the universe in its early stages. How does this do? By infrared sensors. Due to the expansion of the universe, almost all the galaxies we see from the Earth move away from us. Therefore, from our point of view, their light seems to have a longer wavelength because it extends with this movement. We call this “Red displacement: The lengths of its waves are more red because it is longer, thus turning toward the cute red limb. The object was previously created, and thus the more it expands out for a longer period of time, the greater the red displacement.

The James Web telescope for space was able to determine that Mom Z14 is 50 times smaller than the Milky Way, and also discovered the presence of nitrogen and carbon in the galaxy. This is important because although it is only 280 million years of Big Bang, this indicates that Mom Z14 does not belong to the first generation of galaxies formed, because the stars in these galaxies will only consist of hydrogen and helium, which are the elements that are mostly the early universe. The heaviest elements arrived only laterAfter producing it in the stars.

Can James Web cross that threshold and find the first generation of galaxies? These discoveries can be long -term, but we have to continue searching.

This story was originally appeared on Wireless En español It was translated from Spanish.