Written by Samah Labib
Friday, February 24, 2023 11:11 AM
telescope James Webb It offers clearer views of celestial bodies and reveals hidden features since it began working last year, and now according to a study by an international team of astrophysicists, this may also completely change our understanding of the universe, reports engadget.
Looking at images taken by telescopes near the Big Dipper, scientists found six possible galaxies that formed just 500 to 700 million years after the Big Bang. The possibility that they were nearly 13 billion years old wasn’t what made them outlandish, though. They could have as many stars as the Milky Way, according to the team’s calculations.
Scientists explained that it should not exist under the current cosmological theory, because there was not enough matter at that time for galaxies to form as many stars as ours.
And what the scientists saw in the images were a few fuzzy but very bright spots of light that appeared red on our instruments, indicating that they were ancient.
Joel Lega, one of the authors of the study, said that scientists usually expect to see young and young galaxies that glow blue when looking at the ancient universe, because they appear to us as “objects recently formed from the primordial universe” cosmic soup, (do not forget that it takes light to reach Earth). time, so we’re essentially looking back in time when we view telescopic images.)
We looked at the very early universe for the first time and had no idea what we would find, and it turns out that we found something so unexpected that it actually creates problems for science, and it also calls into question the whole picture of early galaxy formation, James Webb said. James Webb previously took pictures of galaxies The oldest, formed about 350 million years after the Big Bang, is young and does not challenge our knowledge of astrophysics.
Image from the James Webb Telescope
For these six galaxies to appear old and huge means that they were forming hundreds of stars a short year after the Big Bang.
By comparison, the Milky Way forms about one or two new stars each year. Moreover, these potential galaxies are about 30 times smaller than our own despite containing many stars.
And scientists acknowledge the possibility that the fuzzy red dots they saw could be something else, like faint quasars or supermassive black holes.
They could also actually be smaller compared to the expected size the scientists got from their calculations. The team needs more data and to verify their findings through spectroscopy, but they think they could have official confirmation sometime next year.
