Thanks to first-of-its-kind observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have glimpsed a point in the cosmos located more than 13 billion light-years away, and therefore seen as it was more than of 13,000 million years, discovering in that location and time a singularly tiny galaxy, with a diameter of only 106 light-years, more than a thousand times less than that of our galaxy.
It may be the smallest of the galaxies discovered at this distance and time in the universe, some 510 million years after its creation, and could help astronomers to better understand the galaxies that existed shortly after the Big Bang, the “explosion”. ” colossal with which the universe was born.
The research has been carried out by the international team of Hayley Williams, from the University of Minnesota in the United States.
The researchers were able to find and study this tiny new galaxy thanks to a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, where a huge mass, such as that of a galaxy or a cluster of galaxies, bends and stretches the light.
Gravitational lensing from a cluster of galaxies made this small, background galaxy appear 20 times brighter than it would if the cluster were not amplifying its light.
The discovery of the tiny galaxy in the confines of the universe and in its infancy will help to better understand what the first galaxies formed after the creation of the universe were like. (Image: ESA/Webb/NASA/CSA/P.Kelly)
Something that has attracted a lot of attention is that in this tiny galaxy new stars are formed (formed) at an extremely high rate for the size of said galaxy, much more compact than other galaxies with equivalent luminosity.
The presence of oxygen in significant quantities has also been detected. It should be noted that shortly after the universe was born, there were no stars and almost all matter was hydrogen with a little helium. The production of the rest of the chemical elements was basically done by the stars, beginning the work of the first ones that were formed.
The study is titled “A magnified compact galaxy at redshift 9.51 with strong nebular emission lines”. And it has been published in the academic journal Science. (Fountain: NCYT de Amazings)