Posted on 11/14/2023 1:00:22 PM PST by Red Badger
These two galaxies, magnified by a gravitational lens, have properties that support the basic picture of galaxy formation as described in the Big Bang theory.
The JWST's view of Pandora's Cluster. This is the cluster that served as a gravitational lens for the new galactic findings. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, I. Labbe (Swinburne University of Technology), R. Bezanson (University of Pittsburgh), A. Pagan (STScI)) The second and fourth most distant galaxies ever seen have been spotted by the eagle eye of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), supporting the basic picture of galaxy formation as described by the Big Bang theory.
The discovery was made possible thanks to a huge helping hand from a massive gravitational lens in the form of the galaxy cluster known as Abell 2744, nicknamed Pandora's Cluster, which is located about 3.5 billion light-years away from us. The immense gravity of the cluster warps the very fabric of space-time sufficiently to magnify the light of more faraway galaxies.
Using the James Webb Space Telescope to search for early galaxies magnified by this cosmic lens, Bingjie Wang of the Penn State Eberly College of Science and member of the JWST UNCOVER (Ultradeep NIRSpec and NIRCam Observations before the Epoch of Reionization) team discovered two of the highest redshift galaxies ever seen.
Cosmological redshift is the stretching of light wavelengths, provoked by the continuous expansion of the universe. The more distant a galaxy is, the more the universe had expanded while that galaxy’s light traveled across space to reach us, and therefore, the more the wavelengths of that light are stretched. As wavelengths get stretched out in this manner, they go from tighter, blueish ones to redder ones, eventually falling into the invisible, infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Galaxies that existed just between 300 and 400 million years after the Big Bang have had their light stretched into those infrared wavelengths that can't be seen by humans, but can indeed be detected by the JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Near-Infrared Spectrometer (NIRSPec).
Wang and her team were able to identify the lensed images of two high-redshift galaxies. One, designated UNCOVER-z13 ("z" is shorthand for "redshift"), has a redshift of 13.079, confirming it to be the second most distant galaxy known. (The most distant confirmed galaxy is JADES-GS-z13-0, which was also discovered by the JWST in 2022 and has a redshift of 13.2.) We see UNCOVER-z13 as it existed just 330 million years after the Big Bang.
The other galaxy recently discovered, UNCOVER-z12, has a redshift of 12.393, placing it in fourth place in the all-time list of most distant galaxies. We see this realm as it was just 350 million years after the Big Bang.
An image of Abell 2744, Pandora’s Cluster, with the two high-redshift galaxies discovered by the JWST seen as insets. (Image credit: Cluster image: NASA/UNCOVER (Bezanson et al.); Insets: NASA/UNCOVER (Wang et al.); Composition: Dani Zemba/Penn State.) What marks the two UNCOVER galaxies out as different is their appearance. Other galaxies seen at similarly high redshifts seem to be point-like, indicating they are very small — just a few hundreds of light years across. The UNCOVER galaxies, on the other hand, have structure.
"Previously discovered galaxies at these distances … appear as a dot in our images," Wang said in a statement. "But one of ours appears elongated, almost like a peanut, and the other looks like a fluffy ball."
These galaxies are also bigger, with UNCOVER-z12 sporting an edge-on disk about 2,000 light years across, which is six times larger than other galaxies seen in this era.
"It is unclear if the difference in size is due to how the stars formed or what happened to them after they formed, but the diversity in the galaxy properties is really interesting," said Wang. "These early galaxies are expected to have formed out of similar materials, but already they are showing signs of being very different than one another."
Although the dichotomy in galaxy properties, even at this early stage in the universe, is eye-opening, both of the newfound realms have general characteristics that are strongly supportive of the Big Bang model. This model describes how, in the aftermath of our universe's creation, galaxies began life small before growing rapidly through mergers with other galaxies and gas clouds.
This growth, in turn, spurred more star formation, which ultimately increased the abundance and variety of elements contained within the young galaxies, introducing substances to them that are heavier than hydrogen and helium. The galaxies uncovered by UNCOVER — if you’ll pardon the pun — are young, small, have a low abundance of heavy elements and are actively forming stars, all of which supports "the whole paradigm of the Big Bang theory," Joel Leja, who is an assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University and a co-researcher on Wang’s team, said in the statement.
Interestingly, the JWST has the ability to see even higher redshift galaxies than UNCOVER-z13 and -z12, meaning they'd be even younger — but it didn’t detect any being lensed by the Pandora Cluster. "That could mean that galaxies just didn’t form before that time and that we’re not going to find anything farther away," said Leja. "Or it could mean we didn’t get lucky enough with our small window."
Astronomers will keep looking, using a multitude of lensing clusters to open up new windows into the deep universe in search of some of the first galaxies.
The discovery was reported on Monday (Nov. 13) in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.
The JWST has found galaxies that can’t exist per current big bang theory. So they are creating excuses and bizarre theories at breakneck speed. I’m afraid that everything they believe is wrong.
And still no dark matter detected.
Love it! So true.
Handywork of the great machine of Epsilon 3.
Not the so-so machine.
“..both of the newfound realms have general characteristics that are strongly supportive of the Big Bang model.”
The fact that their particular characteristics contradict the Big Bang model? We’re not going to cover or discuss that!
Algorithms can correct for that.
That’s a personal question, doncha think?
the Great Machine of Epsilon-3 was not something the Xeelee made - the Xeelee were born in the first nanoseconds after the Big Bang.
Babylon 5 reference.
👌🙄
Very lol
I believe that there never was a big bang but rather a series of bangs as each galaxy is born. Like popcorn.
I know yours is to the Babylon 5 moral play - mine is to “Xeelee” by Stephen Baxter and hard science
The bigger it gets, the more it is reasonable to believe in an Ultimate power...like a GOD.
This doesn’t distance those of us who believe...it strengthens it.
At least, that’s how I FEEL.
If these stories are meant to discourage us...it fails.
The Universe is infinite.
Just like God.....................
The self proclaimed astronomy geniuses are NOT going there.
The whole red shift expanding Universe thingie is ALL from the assumption that ALL of the red shift is caused by Doppler. We ALL know that empty space is NOT empty. What if light has propagation losses going through the NOT so empty space? Light is an EM (electromagnetic) wave. As anybody who has even seen Maxwell's equations knows, EM waves interact with other EM fields. And EMPTY SPACE is full of EM waves.
And guess what? That means ENERGY transfer!
E is proportional to FREQUENCY. Lower the energy with Doppler or lower the light's energy with interaction with other EM fields (or matter) AND YOU GET RED SHIFT!
That will mean that ALL of the BIG BANG THEORY IS BS! AND that will also mean the first galaxies are NOT 12 or 13 Billion years old, they are FAR OLDER and Hubble's constant is NOT a good measure of how far away or even how old they are.
This idiot is a full buy in on MAN MADE GLOWBULL WARMING. You'd have to be either very ignorant OR very stupid to believe that. Old Neil is a lot of both.
The geniuses are now digging deeper and deeper intellectual holes as they cling to and protect the BIG BANG BS. If the BIG BANG THEORY FALLS with it's HEY, it's NOT ALL DOPPLER shift and the 13 Billion year old galaxies would NOT have had time to form, then the geniuses with astronomy PhD's will join the dumba$$e$ with medical degrees as EDUCATED IDIOTS.
NOBODY ever bought that everything came from a point and it's all been expanding for 13.8 billion years, did they? That's every bit as stupid as saying SAFE AND EFFECTIVE without any proof to back that up.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.