Thousands of galaxies flooded this almost infrared image of the Galaxy Cluster Smacs 0723.
In a Swoop, NASA’s James WebB space telescope is largely revolutionized in what astronomers know about forming and assembling the world’s first galaxies. Webb not only pushed the galaxy formation film, but even the main observation astronomers now realize that their models need information to explain what webb has seen only 300 million years after the Big Bang.
To answer the question of how mass assembly in the early universe and how galaxies form their stars, it is clear that the models we have developed on the nearby universe must be informed of the distant universe, Alex Cameron, a postdoctoral researcher at the Astrophysicist.
The physics of how the stars are formed, how they evolve, is very complicated and there are great uncertainties in our models, Cameron says. So, before we begin to question the age of the universe and how old these galaxies must be, we have to do a lot of work to calibrate our understanding of the stars themselves, Cameron says.
Theoretical tension
The success we had in the destruction of files for the most remote galaxies suggests that the formation of galaxies began very early in the history of the universe, Andy Bunker, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford, told me by email. The fact that we see fingerprints of heavy elements such as carbon and oxygen in the most remote galaxies indicates that previous generations of stars have already been shaped and that the “first light” in the universe happened even earlier, he says.
The bright galaxies seem to be ubiquitous in the early world.
Wherever we see, we find many bright galaxies, says Cameron. The challenge is to escape if these galaxies are bright because they have a lot of stars in them or if they are bright, because the stars they have formed are brighter than the typical today’s stars, he says. The signatures we get from these observations tell us that there is a lot we do not understand about the properties of these very first stars, Cameron says.
Webb’s cosmological anchorage
In less than three years, the sensitivity of the Webb to the formation of galaxies is undoubtedly more than the last twenty years with Hubble and large verse telescopes, Richard Ellis, Professor of Astrophysics at College London University, tells me by email.
Bunker agrees
Webb has revealed that some galaxies of the former times are very bright in Ultraviolet, which tells us something about how the stars are strongly formed in these first galaxies, Bunker says.
What is the most enigmatic for these first galaxies?
The standard image suggests that galaxies gradually assemble their stars over time through gas and mergers, Ellis says. However, the first galaxies are often brighter than those who see later, he says.
The relative abundances of certain chemicals in these high red displacements are also unusual with astronomers particularly embarrassment because galaxies in such early times are so rich in the nitrogen element.
But are we in the eyes of the cosmological saint?
I think we observe these systems at a special time, perhaps near their birth, says Ellis. They could be unusually bright because a few tens of millions of years after formation may explode in life. In this case they could not maintain this brightness for a long time, he says.
However, they may also have just more massive stars than those observed in galaxies in later times.
Either way, it shows the fact that we can approach a “sacred gray” when the galaxies first came out of the dark, says Ellis.
As for finding the true cosmic dawn?
It may not be possible to find a “Virgo Chemical” galaxy that emerges for the first time from darkness, says Ellis.
This is due to the fact that the window of five to ten million years, when this gas had such a primary composition was so short.
But when the gas is first heated by young stars, it will cause a cold gas absorption signal that is observed against the glow of the Big Bang, says Ellis. The square kilometers array (a huge international broadcasting program) approaching the completion of Western Australia has the ability to see this clinching signal in consultation with further progress with Webb, he says.
