2023-04-25 12:45:07
The James Webb Space Telescope has begun to glimpse a very ancient period in the history of the universe that until now has been beyond the reach of humanity: the time when galaxies formed and some of them began to assemble to form clusters of galaxies.
For the first time, the existence of a protocluster of seven galaxies has been confirmed so far away that the light now reaching our solar system and from which images are obtained was emitted just 650 million years later. of the Big Bang, the “explosion” with which the universe was born. The current age of the universe is 13.8 billion years.
Based on the collected data, Takahiro Morishita’s team from the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), USA, calculated the future development of the nascent cluster, finding that it has likely grown in size. and mass to resemble the Coma Cluster. However, its current state will take a few billion years to be visible from our solar system.
The observations made by Webb have made it possible to verify that these galaxies were moving at very high speeds within their dark matter halo, on the order of a thousand kilometers per second.
The prediction that the protocluster should be like the Coma cluster of galaxies today means that it should be one of the largest in number of galaxies, on the order of a thousand or more.
The seven galaxies marked and magnified in boxes, in this photo taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, were like this about 13.15 billion years ago. (Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, T. Morishita (IPAC). Image processing: A. Pagan (STScI))
Galaxy clusters are the largest concentrations of mass in the known universe (by mass, not density). There is so much mass in them that they can drastically warp the very fabric of space-time. One manifestation of this deformation, a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, can have an effect of magnifying the light emitted by astronomical objects located great distances behind the cluster, allowing astronomers to look through it as if it were a giant magnifying glass The research team was able to take advantage of this effect, looking through the gravitational lens of the Pandora cluster to see the protocluster in the distance in the background; even the Webb’s powerful instruments need a helping hand from nature to see that far.
El estudio se titula “Early Results from GLASS-JWST. XIV. A Spectroscopically Confirmed Protocluster 650 Million Years after the Big Bang”. Y se ha publicado en la revista académica The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the result of an international collaboration led by NASA, ESA and CSA, respectively the US, European and Canadian space agencies. (Fountain: NCYT de Amazings)
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