December 25th is a very special birthday for many people around the world, but it is also a big event for astronomy enthusiasts – they will be celebrating the second anniversary of the launch of a NASA satellite James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Since coming online in mid-2022, the most powerful telescope ever built has not only amazed us with its stunning images, it has also blown away many of our preconceptions about the early universe.
From mind-bendingly bright galaxies to life on alien planets and even the possible demise of our standard model of the universe, here are JWST’s biggest discoveries of 2023.
Six ‘impossible’ galaxies discovered at dawn
Shortly after going live, JWST immediately Six giant ‘Cosmic Destroyer’ galaxies discoveredwhich appears to contain nearly as many stars as the Milky Way and dates back just 500 million years after the Big Bang.
The discovery has caused a stir in the astronomical community, with some scientists saying it calls into question our current view of galaxy evolution and even our understanding of the universe.
related: James Webb Telescope discovers galaxies that “disappeared” from the birth of the universe
The strange discovery sheds light on a growing mystery about how large galaxies first appeared in our universe.After running simulations, other astronomers suggested that these galaxies might not contain as many stars as first appeared, but might just glow unusually brightly. Whatever the answer, follow-up observations of these mysterious galaxies must be made before scientists can determine the answer.
Questioning the Standard Model of Cosmology
In addition to sowing the seeds of a potential new crisis in astronomy, the telescope also solidified an old one: the Hubble tension.
Simply put, the universe is expanding, but at different rates depending on the angle from which cosmologists look at it. In the past, the two best experiments to measure the expansion rate were the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite (which most likely gave an expansion rate of 67 kilometers per second per megaparsec) and the Hubble Space Telescope, which The telescope studied pulsating stars called Cepheid variables and found a higher value of 73 km/s/Mpc.
Cosmologists thought this nervousness might be due to uncertainty caused by Hubble’s failure to differentiate between Cepheids and background stars, but JWST killed that hope with a result of 74 km/s/Mpc.
Since then, cosmology has plunged into a deeper “crisis” that could reveal new physics and even disrupt the Standard Model. What can fix it? Of course, JWST also took more measurements.
The oldest black hole in the universe discovered twice
Not only are puzzlingly large ancient galaxies on the James Webb Space Telescope’s list of discoveries this year, but also massive black holes. The first was CEERS 1019, 10 million times the mass of the Sun, which JWST discovered just 570 million years after the Big Bang — Making it the oldest black hole ever discovered When discovered in April 2023.
We say “at the time” because JWST was not resting on its laurels.Earlier this month, the telescope spotted a uniform Older massive black holes 440 million years after the beginning of the universe.
How these giant rifts in space-time expanded to such astonishing proportions so early in life remains a mystery. Astrophysicists are currently exploring various options, including black holes formed by the rapid collapse of giant gas clouds, although they have not ruled out that some of them may have formed by the rapid collapse of giant gas clouds. Seeded by a hypothetical “primordial” black holeis thought to have been created shortly after the beginning of the universe, and in some theories even before it began.
Dozens of rogue objects found floating in pairs in space
The telescope’s ultra-powerful eyes also reveal entirely new, unexplained objects.After training in the Orion Nebula, JWST discovered 42 pairs of Jupiter-mass binary objectsor “JuMBO” – Jupiter-sized planets drifting through space in pairs, some at a distance 390 times farther than the distance between Earth and the sun.
related: James Webb Telescope discovers universe’s smallest ‘failed star’ in star cluster filled with mysterious molecules
JuMBOs are too small to be stars, but because they exist in puzzling pairs, they are unlikely to be rogue planets ejected from the solar system.Their discovery alerts astronomers to entirely new formation mechanisms for planets and even Earth failed star.
Scouting for potential signs of alien life in distant water worlds
Another feature of JWST is its ability to measure the atmospheric spectra of distant exoplanets, a toolkit that enables it to discover the atmospheric spectra of exoplanets. Potential signs of life in ‘alien farts’ Goldilocks Water World 120 light years away.
The exoplanet it discovered, K2-18 b, is a sub-Neptunian planet (weight between Earth and Neptune) orbiting the habitable zone of a red dwarf star. After taking spectra of the atmosphere, JWST found that it was rich in hydrogen, methane and carbon dioxide – all chemical signatures of the hydrogen-rich algae world, a major contender. alien life.
Even more tantalizing is the detection of dimethyl sulfide (DMS), a cabbage-flavored compound known only to be produced by microscopic algae in Earth’s oceans. Researchers hope to conduct more observations of K2-18 b and similar worlds to find further evidence of alien life beyond our planet.
Searching for the oldest chain in the “cosmic web” of all time
Stars and galaxies are not evenly distributed in our universe. Instead, they are connected by a vast cosmic web—a vast network of celestial highways paved with hydrogen gas and dark matter.
Formed in the chaotic aftermath of the Big Bang, tendrils of the web formed into clumps from the churning soup of the young universe; where multiple webs intersected, galaxies eventually formed.
Gaining insight into the structure of this network not only gives us a glimpse into the chaotic particle interactions that gave rise to the universe in the first place, so astronomers using JWST were shocked when they discovered The earliest chain in this network –A gas tendril made up of 10 closely packed galaxies, more than 3 million light-years long.
related: James Webb Telescope discovers ‘cosmic vines’ of 20 connected galaxies throughout the early universe
The filament formed when the universe was only 830 million years old, partially wrapped around a bright black hole. By discovering more, researchers hope to find answers to how the first galaxies formed.
An unusually perfect “Einstein ring” was photographed, the most distant gravitational lensing object ever seen
Another addition to the James Webb Space Telescope’s long list of cosmic distance records this year is its discovery of the most distant gravitational lensing object ever— ‘Einstein rings’ created by distortion of light from distant galaxies Surrounding a mysterious dense foreground galaxy.
how far? It’s a baffling 21 billion light-years away, which, considering the universe is 13.8 billion years old, means that light from the Milky Way has traveled almost twice as far due to the expansion of the universe.
In addition to making very beautiful pictures, distant lens light shows like this can help astronomers understand the puzzling nature of astronomers. dark matter: An invisible substance believed to make up 70% of the matter in the universe.
Zoom into a bloody ‘preview’ of the sun’s distant future
James Webb primarily reveals insights into how it all began, but what about our eventual demise? Have no fear (or maybe fear), doommongers: this year, JWST brings you a spectacular light show from a dying star, Preview of the demise of the solar system.
The Ring Nebula, also known as Messier 57 (M57), is the corpse of an exploded star 2,200 light-years away, harboring a tiny pinhole of a white dwarf star in its center, the last remnant of the star’s core.
When it reaches the end of its life, the star explodes outward, flinging its guts so far that it looks like a giant eye. The explosion would likely obliterate or eject any unfortunate planet in its way—the same fate that would befall our solar system 5 billion years later.
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