Webb Telescope Catches Earliest Evidence of the Universe Turning On Its Lights

Study Finds ^ | April 01, 2025 | Staff

[Red Badger]

Genesis 1

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. ...

[Red Badger]

PING!..................

[Texas Eagle]

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?

[sauropod]

Bkmk

[lee martell]

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.

[I want the USA back]

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?

[Red Badger]

We moved..................

[Steely Tom]

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.

[Red Badger]

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............

[laplata]

Truly amazing and awesome. Thanks.

[Red Badger]

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............

[econjack]

You can’t fool me! That red dot is the result of a sneeze.

[Ezekiel]

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

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.

[lurk]

We haven’t even found the center of the universe, and likely never will. What’s all this stuff about finding the beginning?

[minnesota_bound]

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

[DannyTN]

If power flickers and they will all start flashing, it will tell us that they are smart lights.

[voicereason]

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ...

After Chuck Norris said, "Say Please!"

[Texas Eagle]

Ah. Now it makes sense. Thanks. I’d forgotten all about the PARALLAX method.

[rktman]

Christmas lights on a double wide.

[FroggyTheGremlim]

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.