Ancient Galaxies Revealed by Webb Unveil Clues About What Happened Just After The Big Bang

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has ticked a lot of boxes in the near year it’s been aloft. Fly safely to its appointed spot in space 1.6 million km (1 million mi.) from Earth? Check. Successfully deploy its mirror, scientific instruments, and tennis court-sized sun shield? Check. Begin returning eye-popping images like none ever seen before? Check. Now, the Webb has delivered on its biggest promise to date. According to a new, not-yet peer-reviewed paper on the pre-publication website arXiv, and presented on Dec. 12 at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Webb’s mission control, the telescope has spotted and confirmed the four oldest galaxies ever seen—galaxies which date back an average of just 400 million years (some even earlier) after the Big Bang, which occurred 13.8 billion years ago. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “This is the way the galaxies would have appeared 13.4 billion years ago,” says lead author Brant Robertson, professor of astronomy and physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “[With Webb] you can rewind the clock and see them as they were back then. That’s what we’re trying to do by taking these observations: we’re looking back in time.” The new findings show not only that galaxies started forming as early as 325 million years after the Big Bang, but that there are likely ones that are older still—bringing astronomers closer to discovering the a...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Space Source Type: news