2023-11-26 05:00:09
Light emitted by distant galaxies travels for billions of years before reaching our instruments. Through these observations, we can not only understand where we have come from, but also glimpse where we might be heading. A team of astrophysicists from Northwestern University examined the data. often…) of the Space Telescope (A space telescope is a telescope placed beyond the atmosphere. The…) James Webb, observing regions formed only two to three billion years after the Big Bang (The Big Bang is the dense and hot era that the universe experienced…). These observations revealed some surprises.
Young galaxies in the early universe observed by the James Webb Space Telescope.
Image: NASA/ESA/JWST
Using results from the CECILIA (Chemical Evolution Constrained using Ionized Lines in Interstellar Aurorae) survey, the team discovered that these galaxies appear hotter than expected and that they host surprisingly heavy elements, such as nickel.
The researchers analyzed 33 distant galaxies over a continuous 30-hour period. They then combined the wavelengths of light collected from 23 of these galaxies to create a composite image, revealing clues about aspects such as their average temperatures and the elements present.
Allison Strom, lead author of the study and assistant professor of physics and astronomy (Astronomy is the science of observing the stars, seeking to explain…) at the University (A university is an establishment of Higher education whose objective is…) Northwestern, explains that this method dilutes the details of individual galaxies, but offers a better understanding average (The average is a statistical measure characterizing the elements of a set of… ) and allows you to see more subtle features.
Light from 23 distant galaxies, identified by red rectangles in the Hubble Space Telescope image above, combined to capture extremely faint emissions from eight different elements, labeled in the JWST spectrum below. Although these elements are commonly found on Earth, they are rarely observed in distant galaxies.
Image: Aaron M. Geller, Northwestern, CIERA + IT-RCDS
The composite image revealed eight identifiable elements: hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, oxygen, of the family of chalcogens, of…), silicon (Silicon is a chemical element of the family of crystallogens, of symbol Si…), sulfur, argon and nickel. The presence of nickel, heavier than iron in the periodic table, was a surprise. Even in closer ancient galaxies, nickel is rarely observed. It requires multiple life cycles of stars, including several supernovas, for its synthesis and diffusion in the galaxy (Galaxies is a French journal quarterly devoted to science fiction. With…).
Strom suggests that the high temperatures observed in these primitive galaxies could be linked to their unusual chemical composition: “Ultimately, the fact that we observe a higher characteristic temperature is just another manifestation of their chemistry, because the Temperature and gas chemistry in galaxies are intrinsically linked.”
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