Erabaru.net. NASA has just discovered six giant galaxies so ancient, researchers say they shouldn’t exist anymore.
A team of astrophysicists found a mysterious object lurking in images taken from the James Webb Space Telescope, published in a study Wednesday (Feb. 22).
They also say the find “pushes the boundaries” of everything we thought we knew about outer space.
NASA could find a galaxy almost as big as the Milky Way, all filled with some very mature red stars, a recent study has found.
The images obtained by the James Webb Space Telescope show exactly how far away these stars are.
Although they only appear as tiny dots with powerful telescopes, astronomers have now been able to determine the ages of stars through analysis of the light emitted from galaxies.
Almost as old as time itself, researchers found that giant galaxies appeared to have appeared shortly after the beginning of the universe.
Roughly 500 to 700 million years after the Big Bang – to be precise – when the universe was only 3 percent of its present age.
“These objects are much more massive than anyone thought,” said Joel Leja, an assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State.
He continued: “We only hoped to find small, young, baby galaxies at this point, but we have found galaxies that are just as mature as ours in what was previously understood to be the dawn of the universe.”
The researchers also claim that the discovery ‘pushed the boundaries of our understanding of cosmology’ and these objects are now informally referred to as ‘universe breaker’.
“They have lived up to their name so far,” added Leja.
While he revealed that they had ‘no idea what we would find’, the ‘unexpectedness’ has created problems on the ground.
He continued: “It turns out that we found something so unexpected that it actually poses a problem for science. This calls into question the overall picture of early galaxy formation.”
The assistant professor also added that this was their “glimpse” so far, so the researchers wanted to keep an “open mind” about what they saw in front of them.
“While the data suggests they are probably galaxies,” he said. “I think there is a real possibility that some of these objects may turn out to be camouflaged supermassive black holes.”
But, he added: “Regardless, the mass numbers we found mean that the known masses in stars of this period of our universe are up to 100 times greater than we previously thought.”
Leja recalls that when they first encountered the data, the researchers were just starting to ‘dive in’ and ‘the big stuff’ was before they seemed to ‘pop’.
“We started doing modeling and trying to figure out what it was, because they were so big and bright.”
“We’ve discovered something we never thought to ask the universe for – and it’s happening much faster than I thought, but here we are,” he concluded.
Erica Nelson, co-author of the new research and assistant professor of astrophysics at the University of Colorado Boulder, calls them ‘bananas’.
“You just didn’t expect the early universe to organize itself so quickly. These galaxies shouldn’t have had time to form.” (yn)
Source: unilad
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