James Webb spots “impossibly massive” galaxies in the distant universe

The James Webb Space Telescope continues to challenge our best models of how the universe evolved. Several “impossibly” large galaxies have been discovered.

Since the speed of light in a vacuum is constant, we monitor objects in space with time delays. The Sun is 8 beams away from her, so it appears to have existed 8 minutes ago. The next closest star, Alpha Centauri, is about four light-years away, so he appears four years behind schedule.

Extending this principle to the deepest depths of the universe, we can literally go back billions of years and get a glimpse of how galaxies have evolved over the lifetime of the universe. Also, the unprecedented power of James’ Webb Space Telescope has allowed us to see closer to the beginning of time and in greater detail than ever before.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this means that we continue to discover things that defy our current understanding of the early universe. A recent study of James Webb’s data reveals that highly structured barred spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way existed billions of years earlier than previously thought. rice field.

Now the telescope has discovered new sights that shouldn’t be possible with current models. A team of astronomers led by Australia’s Swinburne University of Technology has observed six galaxies that are much larger than they thought at the time. In fact, they have more mass than the entire universe was thought to contain at that time.

James Webb images of six newly discovered massive galaxies
James Webb images of six newly discovered massive galaxies

Swinburne Institute of Technology

“The six galaxies we discovered are over 12 billion years old, reaching up to 100 billion times the mass of the Sun just 500 to 700 million years after the Big Bang.” is too large to exist within current models, and this discovery could change our understanding of how the earliest galaxies in the universe formed.”

Further observation and tracking of the measurements is required to confirm the mass and all its positions. Alternate explanations are still possible, according to the team, but it could still yield entirely new findings.

“One equally attractive alternative is that some of the objects belong to a new class of supermassive black holes that have never been seen before,” said Labbé. increase.

In any case, our understanding of the universe seems to need revision.A study was published in a journal Nature.

Source: Swinburne University of Technology via Simex



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