REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA — The James Webb Space Telescope has solved outer space mystery other. Astronomers can see a type of light emitted billions of years ago from some of the earliest galaxies, but many scientists argue that the light should not be visible.
That’s because, at a crucial time in the history of the universe (the so-called ‘reionization’ period when the first stars began to shine), space was full of gases produced by the Big Bang (the crucial explosion that created our universe).
Such thick gas should have shrouded the light from the first stars and galaxies, but it didn’t. We can see the light emitted from hydrogen atom initial (smallest atom, and one of the first elements ever formed).
“One of the most puzzling problems presented by previous observations was the detection of light from hydrogen atoms in the early universe, which would have been completely blocked by the pure neutral gas that formed after the Big Bang,” said Callum Witten, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge, who led this latest Webb research.
He said in a statement that many hypotheses previously put forward to explain the ‘unexplained’ loss of emissions. But the Webb telescope, built with large mirrors to detect very faint light and detect very distant objects, has provided a convincing answer.
It turns out that this ‘unexplained’ light that was previously observed to originate from a particular ancient galaxy is not just from one galaxy. Webb discovered that this emission actually comes from clusters of galaxies (we can’t see them).
These early galaxies collided and merged with each other (galaxies often collide), ultimately creating a very active cosmic environment. In this new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, researchers found that this intense activity (galactic collisions that trigger the creation of new stars) produces strong light emissions and also paves the way for light to escape into space.
“Where Hubble saw only a large galaxy, Webb saw a group of small, interacting galaxies, and this discovery has a major impact on our understanding of the unexpected hydrogen emission from some of the first galaxies,” said a researcher at Stanford University, Sergio Martin-Alvarez, who working on this latest study.
Astronomers will continue to point the Webb at some of the earliest galaxies ever formed, with the larger goal of understanding how galaxies, like our Milky Way, formed.
2024-01-23 07:12:06
#Scientists #Discover #Space #Puzzles #Webb #Telescope #Republika #Online
