The first galaxies might have formed much earlier than previously thought, according to observations from the James Webb Space Telescope that are reshaping astronomers’ understanding of the early universe.
Researchers using the powerful observatory have now published papers in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters, documenting two exceptionally bright, exceptionally distant galaxies, based on data gathered within the first few days of Webb going operational in July.
Their extreme luminosity points to two intriguing possibilities, NASA astronomers said on Thursday.
Photo: AFP
The first is that these incredibly massive galaxies had to start forming 100 million years earlier than the currently held end of the so-called cosmic dark age, when the universe contained only gas and dark matter.
A second possibility is that they are made up of “Population III” stars, which have never been observed, but are theorized to have been made of only helium and hydrogen, before heavier elements existed.
Because these stars burned so brightly at extreme temperatures, galaxies made of them would not need to be as massive for the brightness as seen by Webb, and could have started forming later.
“We are seeing such bright, such luminous galaxies at this early time, that we’re really uncertain about what is happening here,” University of California professor of astrophysics Garth Illingworth said.
The galaxies’ rapid discovery also defied expectations that Webb would need to survey a much larger volume of space to find such galaxies.
“It’s sort of a bit of a surprise that there are so many that formed so early,” Rochester Institute of Technology professor of astrophysics Jeyhan Kartaltepe said.
The two galaxies were found to have definitely existed approximately 450 million and 350 million years after the Big Bang.
The second of these, called GLASS-z12, now represents the most distant starlight ever seen.
Illingworth, who coauthored the paper on GLASS-z12, said that disentangling the two competing hypotheses would be a “real challenge,” although the Population III idea was more appealing to him, as it would not require upending existing cosmological models.
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