The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has achieved a new milestone by capturing images of objects that existed when the universe was just over 200 million years old.
“We are stepping into completely uncharted territory and cannot be certain what we will find,” the scientists described in their research centered around five objects that could represent the first galaxies of the universe.
Analyzing data from the James Webb Space Telescope—a pioneering instrument developed and operated by NASA to explore the early universe—a team of researchers from the U.S., France, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Australia, and Israel has made an unprecedented discovery.
These five objects are extremely red and exhibit an unprecedentedly high redshift.
What Is Redshift?
Redshift occurs due to the expansion of the universe, stretching the wavelengths of light emitted by distant objects. As a result, the light shifts toward the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum.
The intense red coloration of these five objects indicates their ancient origins. Calculations suggest these could be five primordial galaxies existing in the cosmic space of 13.6 billion years ago.
This discovery surpasses the previous record set by galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0, observed from about 13.52 billion years ago.
Reaching a New Cosmic Distance
The light from these five objects began its journey to Earth 13.6 billion years ago. At that time, they were located 13.6 billion light-years away. However, due to the universe’s expansion, these objects—if they still exist today—would now be 34 billion light-years away.
Estimating the exact age of these galaxies and determining the precise moment they formed before being observed remains challenging.
According to Dr. Hakim Atek of the Paris Institute of Astrophysics, a co-author of the study, based on current estimates of the universe’s age and the constraints governing galaxy formation, these objects were at most 150 million years old when observed.
“Ultimately, these observations will impose stringent constraints on the physical processes allowed in our cosmological models,” Dr. Atek told Space.com.
A Dynamic Early Universe
Dr. Vasily Kokorev of the University of Texas, the study’s lead author, noted that James Webb’s discovery of increasingly high-redshift galaxies suggests their numbers in the universe’s first few hundred million years are greater than anticipated.
This implies that the early universe was a rapidly evolving and explosive environment, far more dynamic than previously imagined.
GLIMPSE Survey and Gravitational Lensing
The discovery of these five candidate galaxies is part of the GLIMPSE survey, a large-scale sky survey aimed at identifying ancient cosmic objects. For this, the James Webb Space Telescope benefited from the gravitational lensing effect of the foreground galaxy cluster Abell S1063.
Abell S1063, located 4 billion light-years away, acts as a “gravitational lens,” magnifying objects behind it with its immense gravitational field that warps space-time, much like a cosmic magnifying glass.
