Telescope Spots Most Distant Object Known to Humanity
- Editor OGN Daily
- Jun 2
- 2 min read
In what's being described as a "cosmic miracle", the James Webb Space Telescope has peered back in time 13.5 billion years to make yet another discovery.
JWST does two things better than any other scientific instrument in human history: spotting early galaxies and breaking its own records. Now, the $10 billion NASA space telescope has done both again, detecting a galaxy that existed just 280 million years after the Big Bang, a feat that the team behind this research has dubbed a "cosmic miracle."
Currently, as the earliest and most distant galaxy ever detected, this "the mother of all early galaxies," this new JWST discovery has been named MoM z14.
Since it began sending data back to Earth in the summer of 2022, the JWST has excelled in detecting galaxies at so-called "high redshifts." This refers to the phenomenon of the wavelength of light from distant and thus early sources being stretched and shifted toward the "red end" of the electromagnetic spectrum as it traverses expanding space. The earlier and thus further away an object is, the greater the redshift.
"The broader story here is that JWST was not expected to find any galaxies this early in the history of the universe, at least not at this stage of the mission," team member and Yale University professor of Astronomy and Physics Pieter van Dokkum told Space.com.
"MoM z14 is not one of the very first objects that formed in the universe, as the stars in those galaxies are composed of hydrogen and helium only - we would not see carbon or nitrogen," van Dokkum said. "It could be part of the first wave of formation of 'normal' galaxies, that is, the first galaxies that have elements like nitrogen and carbon - but we've thought that before!"
