The discovery of galaxies in the early universe, that is, observable only hundreds of millions of years after big Bang— gives astronomers new insights into the early history of the universe. In particular, by studying their colors, astronomers can reconstruct their basic physical properties, such as their stellar mass, their age, or the presence of supermassive black holes in their cores.
A team of scientists, in which the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics of the University of Valencia (UV) participates, has discovered a population of six galaxies observed simultaneously 500-800 million years after big Bang, and is characterized by its own color, redder than usual in cosmic formations of the same time.
While these discoveries still need spectroscopic confirmation—which is why they are listed as candidates—the work already suggests an abundance of old stars in these galaxies, which implies that their stellar masses could become up to 100,000 million times larger than our sun. All this even refers to the space age of intense formation of new stars; that is, the moment at which it is assumed that the stars were still very young.
The stars found were larger than expected between 500 and 700 million years after the Big Bang.
“The most interesting thing is that even if only part of these new objects were confirmed, this would already mean that the masses are 10 to 100 times higher than expected,” he says. Mauro Stefanonultraviolet radiation researcher and one of the signatories of a paper published this Wednesday in Nature.
The combination of all these factors – the number of galaxies, mass and stellar age – allows the research team to suggest that star formation could be a much more efficient process from what has been considered so far.
“The galaxies observed at this time are mostly blue in color, which indicates the intensive formation of new stars,” the scientist comments. Instead, and unexpectedly, galaxies currently identified show redder colorswhich makes them candidates for inclusion in the list of ancient galaxies of the early Universe,” he adds.
James Webb Space Telescope, key to discovering galaxies
To the human eye and from Earth, the population of galaxies identified in this work occupies a small area of the sky. equivalent to one twentieth of the surface of the moon. Getting closer to space and achieving the results now achieved by an international team led by astrophysicist Ivo Labbe (Center for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Australia) is what science has to thank the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
This observatory, the result of a collaboration between the US (NASA), European (ESA) and Canadian (CSA) space agencies, provides the scientific community with a first look at star formation, gas and dust in galaxies. through 98% of the history of the universe. Unprecedented infrared resolution and sensitivity needed to detect the most distant galaxies.
The James Webb Telescope allows you to take pictures with up to 20 times higher resolution and far more sensitive data than what has been obtained to date from the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. Findings like these confirm the effectiveness of the space observatory and the effectiveness of studies that use its many filters to identify and describe the first galaxies,” says the UV researcher.
This article was first published on SYNCHRONIZATION
Source: Hiper Textual
