Two different astronomers have achieved, almost at the same time, detect something that was not believed possible: oxygen in Jades-GS-Z14-0, the most distant galaxy known. The finding, announced by two independent studies and to be published in ‘Astronomy & Astrophysics’ … and ‘The astrophysical journal’, It constitutes the most distant oxygen detection in history, and it raises serious doubts about the way in which the first galaxies were formed in the primitive universe.
Discovered just a year ago by the James Webb space telescope, Jades-GS-Z14-0 is in the Fornax constellation (the oven) at the incredible distance of 13.4 billion light years of the earth, which means that the light that now comes from it left for us when the universe had less than 300 million years, just 2% of its current age.
The oxygen detection, carried out with the Alma Telescope, which is part of the European Observatory of the South (ESO), in the Atacama desert, in Chile, means that this remote galaxy is much more ‘mature’ than it was expected in such an early time.
A teenager in a nursery
“It’s like finding a teenager where you would only expect to see babies,” says Sander Schouws, of the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands and the first author of the study of ‘The Astrophysical Journal’-. The results show that the galaxy formed very fast and that, in addition, it is maturing quickly, which is added to the growing evidence that galaxies formation happens much faster than expected.
In general, at the beginning of the universe the galaxies begin their life containing a large number of young stars, mainly made of light elements such as hydrogen and helium, almost the only ones that emerged from the Big Bang. Then, already measure that these young stars evolve, they create heavier elements, such as oxygen, which are dispersed throughout the host galaxy when the stars die. A process that requires a lot of time, even more than one billion years. Therefore, scientists had always thought that, at 300 million, the universe was too young to have ‘mature’ and rich galaxies in heavy elements. Something that does not fit at all with what is observed in Jades-GS-Z14-0. Both studies, in fact, indicate that galaxy contains up to ten times more heavy elements than it should.
“These unexpected results,” says Stefano Carniani, of the SCUOLA NORMALE SUPERIORE DI PISA and principal author of the article of ‘Astronomy & Astrophysics’– I was surprised because they offer a new vision of the first phases of evolution of the galaxies. The evidence that a galaxy is already mature in the primitive universe raises many questions about when and how galaxies were actually formed.
More precise distances
«Oxygen detection also allowed astronomers to measure the distance to Jades-GS-Z14-0 with much greater precision. »The detection of soul – explains Eleanora Parlandi, of the carnian team offers an extraordinarily precise measurement of the distance of the galaxy, with an uncertainty of only 0.005 percent. Which is equivalent to an accuracy of 5 cm in a distance of 1 km, and helps to refine our understanding of the properties of that distant galaxy «.
The finding, in short, is a new and important step towards the understanding of what remains one of the greatest mysteries of science, the formation of galaxies, which are the fundamental ‘bricks’ of any structure in the universe and without which, in addition, there could not have been the necessary conditions for life.
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