Posted on 04/01/2025 12:10:41 PM PDT by Red Badger
A close view on one of the most distant galaxies known: On the left are some 10,000 galaxies at all distances, observed with the James Webb Space Telescope. The zoom-in on the right shows, in the center as a red dot, the galaxy JADES-GS-z13-1. Its light was emitted 330 million years after the Big Bang and traveled for almost 13.5 billion years before reaching Webb’s golden mirror. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, JADES Collaboration, J. Witstok, P. Jakobsen, A. Pagan (STScI), M. Zamani (ESA/Webb).
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In a nutshell
* A galaxy from just 330 million years after the Big Bang has been caught emitting a specific type of light (Lyman-alpha) that normally gets blocked by the early universe’s dense hydrogen fog, offering the earliest direct evidence of reionization.
* The detection suggests this ancient galaxy created a bubble of ionized, transparent space around itself, allowing its light to escape and reach us, something scientists weren’t sure was possible at such an early time.
* This discovery pushes the timeline of the universe’s transformation from opaque to transparent further back than previously confirmed, showing that small, early galaxies may have played a key role in lighting up the cosmos.
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COPENHAGEN, Denmark — At a time when light couldn’t easily travel through space due to a thick fog of neutral hydrogen, one galaxy managed to carve out its own bubble of clear space, allowing us to detect a specific light signal that should have been completely absorbed. This cosmic lighthouse from 13 billion years ago gives us our earliest direct glimpse of how the universe transitioned from darkness to light.
The galaxy, cataloged as JADES-GS-z13-1-LA, was observed at what scientists call a redshift of 13. While that technical term might not mean much to most of us, it represents an incredible distance in both space and time. When we look at this galaxy, we see light that has traveled for over 13 billion years to reach us.
This study, published in Nature, used the James Webb Telescope to observe this early galaxy. Scientists also detected a Lyman-alpha emission, a specific wavelength of light that’s easily absorbed by neutral hydrogen, the gas that filled the early universe. Finding this emission suggests this galaxy was actively clearing the cosmic fog around it, like turning on a light in a dark room.
From Cosmic Dark Ages to First Light
Recent observations with the James Webb Space Telescope have already revealed surprisingly bright galaxies existed earlier than astronomers expected. But this new finding provides something more concrete: direct evidence of reionization, the cosmic transformation that brought the universe out of darkness.
James Webb Space Telescope
This illustration depicts NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope – the largest, most powerful, and most complex space science telescope ever built – fully unfolded in space. (Credits: NASA/Adriana Manrique Gutierrez) For context, in the first few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang, the universe expanded and cooled enough for protons and electrons to combine into neutral hydrogen atoms. This created a cosmic fog that blocked most light from traveling freely for hundreds of millions of years, a period astronomers call the cosmic “dark ages.”
Eventually, the first stars and galaxies began forming and producing ultraviolet radiation that started breaking apart these neutral hydrogen atoms. This gradually made the universe transparent to light (reionization).
Breaking Through the Cosmic Fog
The research team analyzed this distant galaxy using imaging and spectroscopy from JWST’s powerful instruments. The data revealed not just the usual signs of light being blocked by early-universe hydrogen, but also a surprisingly bright signal of light breaking through. Such strong emissions had previously only been seen in much younger galaxies when more of the universe had already been cleared of neutral hydrogen.
Astronomers also saw what they call an “extremely blue ultraviolet continuum” (essentially meaning this galaxy appears very blue in color). The fact that we could even see the Lyman-alpha emission means the galaxy was incredibly good at making and releasing powerful radiation, strong enough to break apart the hydrogen gas around it.
“We know from our theories and computer simulations, as well as from observations at later epochs, that the most energetic UV light from the galaxies ‘fries’ the surrounding neutral gas, creating bubbles of ionized, transparent gas around them,” says study author Joris Witstok from the University of Copenhagen, in a statement. “These bubbles percolate the Universe, and after around a billion years, they eventually overlap, completing the epoch of reionization. We believe that we have discovered one of the first such bubbles.”
The Cosmic Powerhouse Behind the Light
Galaxy JADES-GS-z13-1
The galaxy JADES-GS-z13-1 observed through seven different filters that transmit only part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The farther to the left, the more ultraviolet the light is. While the galaxy is clearly seen in the four longer-wavelength images on the right, it is completely invisible in the shortest wavelengths images on the left. Note that the colors are “false”; the images merely shows where the light is seen. Credit: Witstok et al. (2025).
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What could produce such powerful radiation in this ancient galaxy? One explanation involves extremely massive, hot stars that are much more efficient at producing ionizing radiation than typical stars today. These cosmic giants could be heating surrounding gas to temperatures exceeding 100,000 Kelvin, far hotter than our Sun’s surface at about 5,800 Kelvin.
Another possibility is that this galaxy contains an active supermassive black hole. The intense radiation from material falling into such a black hole could efficiently ionize nearby gas. Supporting this idea, the researchers found the galaxy appears extremely compact, smaller than 114 light-years across which is more compact than most galaxies seen at similar distances.
“Most galaxies are known to host a central, supermassive black hole. As these monsters engulf surrounding gas, the gas is heated to millions of degrees, making it shine brightly in X-rays and UV before disappearing forever,” says Witstok.
The researchers also considered whether this might be one of the universe’s very first generation of stars, called Population III stars, formed from pristine gas containing only hydrogen and helium. These stars would be substantially more massive and hotter than later stars. However, the galaxy seems slightly too bright to fit this explanation perfectly.
Rewriting the Timeline of Cosmic Dawn
Whatever is powering this ancient light source, its discovery reshapes our understanding of how the universe transitioned from darkness to light. Until recently, the consensus among astronomers was that reionization did not begin until the Universe was around half a billion years old, completing another half billion years later. But this study pushes the beginning of reionization significantly earlier than previously thought.
The finding also provides evidence for an important physical process called Wouthuysen-Field coupling, where Lyman-alpha photons affect the spin temperature of hydrogen atoms. Scientists hope to detect this with radio telescopes searching for signals from the early universe.
“We knew that we would find some of the most distant galaxies when we built Webb,” says study author Peter Jakobsen from the University of Copenhagen. “But we could only dream of one day being able to probe them in such detail that we can now see directly how they affect the whole Universe.”
The universe’s first light didn’t switch on all at once; it started with galaxies like this one, each creating its own bubble of clear space that eventually merged with others to transform the entire cosmos. By pushing back the timeline of this process and showing it began with ordinary galaxies rather than exceptional ones, this discovery connects the dots between the universe’s first few hundred million years and the transparent cosmos that would eventually allow for our existence.
The Beginning
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ...
PING!..................
The earth is only about 4 billion years old. What we call a year is how long it takes for the earth to orbit the sun.
How can they know how long anything took to travel anywhere before the earth existed?
Bkmk
So much science and technology is being spent on discovering the point of origin for our universe. I’m thinking it may be an elaborate waste of time and money, because the origin of our particular universe may simply be unknowable, something that can be concluded but never fully verified.
The pursuit of that information does keep several thousands of highly skilled professionals actively employed.
So there’s that.
Somebody ‘splain please! It took over 13 billion years for the light to get here. So it’s over 13 billion light years away. I thought the universe was much smaller then, and things were not far from each other because the universe hadn’t expanded so much.
So why does this light source appear so far away in the telescope?
We moved..................
JWST is the most unbelievable instrument.
It’s focal-plane arrays are cooled to 6 Kelvin. That’s six degrees above absolute zero. It’s wavelength sensitivity goes out to 28 μm; the best Earth-bound night vision cameras go out to 14 μm. That limit is set not by the image detector, it’s set by the temperature of the camera itself.
This allows it to detect photons from incredible distances, that have been stretched out by Hubble expansion across the width of the known universe.
The Speed of Light is a constant in a vacuum.
Close objects like stars can be measured with basic geometry using the PARALLAX method. Observing the star’s apparent shift in position from different parts of the Earth’s orbit.
Galaxies are much farther away and require using the Red Shift of it’s light to measure the distance. The farther away it is the more Red Shifted its light will be. Certain elements produce dark lines in the spectrum of light, so looking at the spectrum of the light and noting how much a certain element is shifted tells you how far away it is............
Truly amazing and awesome. Thanks.
The Speed of Light is a constant in a vacuum.
Close objects like stars can be measured with basic geometry using the PARALLAX method. Observing the star’s apparent shift in position from different parts of the Earth’s orbit.
Galaxies are much farther away and require using the Red Shift of it’s light to measure the distance. The farther away it is the more Red Shifted its light will be. Certain elements produce dark lines in the spectrum of light, so looking at the spectrum of the light and noting how much a certain element is shifted tells you how far away it is............
You can’t fool me! That red dot is the result of a sneeze.
And then they discovered that nobody was home!
Whatever is powering this ancient light source, its discovery reshapes our understanding of how the universe transitioned from darkness to light. Until recently, the consensus among astronomers was that reionization did not begin until the Universe was around half a billion years old, completing another half billion years later. But this study pushes the beginning of reionization significantly earlier than previously thought.
Whatever happened to their sixth cents? It sure would go a long way in solving these sorts of mysteries.
We haven’t even found the center of the universe, and likely never will. What’s all this stuff about finding the beginning?
How to reboot the universe.
https://images.cartoonstock.com/lowres_800/computers-mantra-it-tech_support-it_workers-computer_issues-CS553085_low.jpg
The big switch.
https://images.cartoonstock.com/lowres_800/switches-on_switches-off_switches-flipping_a_switch-problems-social-issues-CC121686_low.jpg
If power flickers and they will all start flashing, it will tell us that they are smart lights.
After Chuck Norris said, "Say Please!"
Ah. Now it makes sense. Thanks. I’d forgotten all about the PARALLAX method.
Christmas lights on a double wide.
In a large HII region, all ionizating radiation eventually becomes Lyman-alpha. These Lyman-alpha photons “bounce” around the atoms, causing excitation from the ground state to the first Lyman level. The atom may then un-excite itself releasing another Lyman-alpha photon and return to its ground state.
But at this ground state, the electron may have its spin aligned or opposed to its “orbit.” The difference between these two states yields the so-called spin temperature.
I don’t know the odds of the two states resulting from the re-combination. They would depend on the motion of the atoms, the kinetic temperature of the hydrogen atoms.
A quasar is certainly a large source of ionizing radiation, so the quasar’s radiation would affect the spin temperature and thus the strength of the 21-cm radiation.
Of course, the 21-cm radiation would be affected by the red-shift value of the galaxy itself.
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