What are the ‘impossible galaxies’ found by the James Webb Telescope?

A study published Wednesday (22) in the scientific journal natureObtained from images from the James Webb Space Telescope could change our understanding of how the first galaxies formed after the Big Bang.

The analyzed data shows records of six supermassive galaxies that will exist between 500 and 700 million years after the explosion that would have formed the Universe.

According to Joel Leja, Professor of Astronomy at Pennsylvania State University, one of the study’s authors, “We expected to find only small, young, baby galaxies at this point, but we did find them in galaxies that previously appeared to be as mature as ours at the dawn of the universe.”

First author of the study, Ivo Labbé, of the Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, said in a text published on his website yesterday (22): Speech He nearly suffocated from his coffee when reviewing the first images of James Webb in July of last year: a galaxy with a mass of 100 billion stars, 13.1 billion light-years away. “We have discovered the impossible,” said the scientist.

What was the impact of the discovery of six supermassive galaxies?

The images presented in the study show objects whose light took 13 billion years to reach Earth. Most surprisingly, according to the current cosmological theory of the origin of the universe (the Big Bang), the universe was “only” 700 million years old at that time. If the model holds, it means that the first galaxy observed by Labbé produced as many stars as our Milky Way in record time.

In order to understand the operation of this principle within the boundaries of the universe, it should not be forgotten that the objects we observe in space have a delay in time, since the speed of light in vacuum is constant. So the image of the Sun we see now is a representation of it eight minutes ago (because it’s eight light minutes away).

But as James Webb sees objects further and further away, it means he’s getting closer to the so-called “beginning of time.” However, new sightings detected were impossible at the time. In addition to being much larger than previously thought, the study says, they also have more mass than was thought to contain at the time the entire Universe.