James Webb Space Telescope: Discoveries

inertia

Super Member
NASA (December 9th, 2022)

An international team of astronomers has used data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to report the discovery of the earliest galaxies confirmed to date. The light from these galaxies has taken more than 13.4 billion years to reach us, as these galaxies date back to less than 400 million years after the big bang, when the universe was only 2% of its current age.

Earlier data from Webb had provided candidates for such infant galaxies. Now, these targets have been confirmed by obtaining spectroscopic observations, revealing characteristic and distinctive patterns in the fingerprints of light coming from these incredibly faint galaxies."


The JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES)

STScI-2022-061a-m.jpg

IMAGE CREDIT: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb), and L. Hustak (STScI). SCIENCE: B. Robertson (UCSC), S. Tacchella (Cambridge), E. Curtis-Lake (Hertfordshire), S. Carniani (Scuola Normale Superiore), and the JADES Collaboration.


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Top five discoveries so far:

- JWST can observe planets via the transit technique and

- JWST also detects light directly from exoplanets including evidence of water and carbon dioxide within atmospheres

- JWST has found many candidate galaxies that were formed within 400 million years of the big bang

- JWST has found an order of magnitude more early-universe galaxies with large masses and well-developed disks than expected

- two galaxies known as VV 191 look like they’re interacting, but one is more distant, meaning the light from the distant galaxy passes through the closer one.


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"Evidence is emerging for a differential evolution of the galaxy population during the reionization epoch at z > 6. While the number densities of fainter galaxies continue to decline with redshift, the most UV-luminous sources seem to be in place rather early."

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Reference: Rohan P. Naidu, Pascal A. Oesch, Pieter van Dokkum, et al., " Two Remarkably Luminous Galaxy Candidates at z ~= 10-12 Revealed by JWST", The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 940., No. 1

- About redshift measurement (z)
 
- JWST has found many candidate galaxies that were formed within 400 million years of the big bang

- JWST has found an order of magnitude more early-universe galaxies with large masses and well-developed disks than expected

- two galaxies known as VV 191 look like they’re interacting, but one is more distant, meaning the light from the distant galaxy passes through the closer one.

Cool stuff.

I wonder what the galaxies would have been like in the early universe. Without alot of prior Supernovas to create the heavier elements, its seems like it would just be hydrogen, helium, and lithium floating around.
 
Cool stuff.

I wonder what the galaxies would have been like in the early universe. Without alot of prior Supernovas to create the heavier elements, its seems like it would just be hydrogen, helium, and lithium floating around.

I wonder about it too. Digging even deeper, without positrons, electrons, neutrinos, and antineutrinos ( Leptons ) nuclear synthesis doesn't occur.

example:

e(-) + e(+) ----- > 2*gamma , where e(+), e(-), represent a positron, an electron, and the resulting 2*gamma represents the production of two photons.

It takes two photons to conserve both energy and momentum - simultaneously.

Schrodinger equations for atoms other than Hydrogen cannot be solved exactly. What we do know is that the value of the cosmic mass density determined the quantity of primordial Hydrogen that, in turn, fused into Helium during the first minutes of the universe's existence.

" ... the pinpoint precision with which the mass density of the early universe must be specified for the big bang theory to agree with reality" is astounding*.

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Reference: MIT physics annual, Guth, p. 4

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Cool stuff.

I wonder what the galaxies would have been like in the early universe. Without alot of prior Supernovas to create the heavier elements, its seems like it would just be hydrogen, helium, and lithium floating around.
Which makes me wonder when planets first appeared. It would have to be after some starts had already died, and new ones born in the remnants.
 
I wonder about it too. Digging even deeper, without positrons, electrons, neutrinos, and antineutrinos ( Leptons ) nuclear synthesis doesn't occur.

example:

e(-) + e(+) ----- > 2*gamma , where e(+), e(-), represent a positron, an electron, and the resulting 2*gamma represents the production of two photons.

It takes two photons to conserve both energy and momentum - simultaneously.

Schrodinger equations for atoms other than Hydrogen cannot be solved exactly. What we do know is that the value of the cosmic mass density determined the quantity of primordial Hydrogen that, in turn, fused into Helium during the first minutes of the universe's existence.

" ... the pinpoint precision with which the mass density of the early universe must be specified for the big bang theory to agree with reality" is astounding*.

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Reference: MIT physics annual, Guth, p. 4

.?

How large is the universe and when did it all start?

NOVA

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NASA (December 9th, 2022)

An international team of astronomers has used data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to report the discovery of the earliest galaxies confirmed to date. The light from these galaxies has taken more than 13.4 billion years to reach us, as these galaxies date back to less than 400 million years after the big bang, when the universe was only 2% of its current age.

Earlier data from Webb had provided candidates for such infant galaxies. Now, these targets have been confirmed by obtaining spectroscopic observations, revealing characteristic and distinctive patterns in the fingerprints of light coming from these incredibly faint galaxies."


The JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES)

STScI-2022-061a-m.jpg

IMAGE CREDIT: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb), and L. Hustak (STScI). SCIENCE: B. Robertson (UCSC), S. Tacchella (Cambridge), E. Curtis-Lake (Hertfordshire), S. Carniani (Scuola Normale Superiore), and the JADES Collaboration.


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One question I still struggle with is, "how did we beat that light to our present position?".
 
I don't understand your question. Please clarify

Are you referring to gravitational redshift?

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The article states that we see the see these galaxies 400 millions years after the big bang. But we also came from the same location or at least our atoms or matter did. How did our atoms get to our location before the light from these galaxies? For example, suppose a space ship escapes from an exploding star and arrives on earth 10 thousand years later and from earth looks back at the exploded star through a telescope. Will they view the star as it was when it exploded or will they see the star as it was 10,000 years minus the number of light years to the star? In the same way how can we see these galaxies 400 million years after the big bang when we have been here as least 5 billion years plus the time it took to get here? The light from these galaxies (400 million years after the big bang) should already be well past our location. That would mean we are looking at the galaxies as they were 13 billion and some years ago but not 400 million year after the big bang. Am I missing something?
 
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The article states that we see the see these galaxies 400 millions years after the big bang.

I'm assuming that you are referring to -this- article, right?

But we also came from the same location or at least our atoms or matter did.

Okay - Based on a Hubble constant of H0 = 67.9 km/mpc-s :

1/H
0 = (1/67.9 mpc - s/km)*(3.09*10^49 km/mpc)*(1 yr./3.156*10^7 s) = 14.45*10^9 years [ 14.5 billion years ]

So, inflation coupled with a continuing acceleration of spacetime stretching about 0.4 billion years since the transcendent creation event would mix and displace matter and energy in all 4*pi steradians and we know it wasn't spread out evenly as shown below:


The phrase "from the same location" is a hard parameter to pin down.


How did our atoms get to our location before the light from these galaxies?

Let's look a bit deeper.

First, we are only able to view distant light sources within our cosmic light horizon. Any luminous object beyond our light horizon is not detectable with our best instruments by definition.


Second, population 1 stars are metal-rich and they are found primarily in the disk of our Milky Way. Population 2 stars are metal poor and are found below the disk of the Milky Way. Both groups of stars differ chemically from each other. Each succeeding generation of stars produces higher proportions of metal rich compositions as time progresses; so, population 1 stars are built upon the deaths of population 2 stars and these older stars left behind just enough metals to produce another generation of stars that produce more metals than their previous stars produced. Population 3 stars are ancient and had no metals consisting of hydrogen and helium.

[ Some population 2 stars that were formed when the galaxy was very young and these stars are some of the oldest objects in the Milky Way. ]

Therefore, light existed before the heavy elements like the iron (Fe) in our hemoglobin existed.

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Infrared vs. Visible Spectrum Exploration


Visible vs Infrared .jpg
Image credit: Space Telescope Science Institute

This expanding torus shaped astronomical object is the Ring Nebula (M57) and its semimajor axis is about a light year across and 2,500 ly distant from Earth. The central star is a white dwarf star surrounded by ionized helium gas and further outward a ring of ionized oxygen gas also encompases the nebula. As shown in the image above, the James Webb Space Telescope provides an infrared image showing details that the Hubble Space Telescope could never accomplish.

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JWST discovers exoplanets orbiting dead stars.

Timestamp: ~ 3:50 - 5:20


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