James Webb Just Detected A Huge Structure Older Than The Universe!

[Music] cosmology has changed forever with the launch of James web on Christmas Day 2021 ever since it opened its impressively sharp highresolution infrared eyes James web looked back at some of the earliest stages of the universe gathered sharp pristine and beautiful insights of early star and Galaxy formation and provided insights into the formation of planetary systems including our own solar system but in some sense James web was almost too good far exceeding all hopes and expectations astronomers expected to find some of these infant galaxies with web but they didn't expect to find so many web's unprecedentedly deep views revealed a colossal surprise a bunch of the impossible early galaxies even at these earliest times these galaxies were too big bright and numerous to explain some of which are even older than the universe our best Cosmic predictions based on Lambda cold Dark Matter the standard model of cosmology didn't expect what James web saw in other words discoveries made by James web could shake their understanding of Galactic history so is the big bang and all of modern cosmology in trouble join us as we dig deep into how James Webb just found massive structures that could defy our current theories of the universe the farther and farther back into the distant Universe we look we have a picture of what we expect to see at some point we should find the first and earliest bright large luminous Galaxy and we should see their number density rapidly decrease as we approach that limit before that we should find only smaller and less evolved galaxies decreasing in number and number density until we find the very first among those before that we should only see individual star clusters and Proto galaxies and these should be extremely blue and primitive and again should only exist in low number densities the farther back we go and finally there should truly be a time where the very first stars and star clusters of all appear and beyond that there should be no luminous sources at all to observe excepting the big Bang's leftover glow itself when we look into these deep depths of the universe and examine these galaxies we're basically asking the universe how did you grow up and come to be the way you are today given that we have a model of the universe a mix of Dark Matter normal matter dark energy and a little bit of radiation we can arrive at predictions for what we expect to see in the universe at any given time looking at these distant objects with the James web Space Telescope and with its spectroscopic capabilities in particular allows us to test that model and to see if we truly understand understand the universe we inhabit or if and how we have to revise our picture of the cosmos the James web Space Telescope is changing astronomy in many ways from peering into the atmosphere of exoplanets to capturing stunning images of distant Cosmic phenomena but perhaps its greatest scientific contribution is its ability to observe galaxies that are so distant that looking at them is like looking back in time projects like webs Sear or Cosmic Evolution early relase science survey are scanning the sky to pick out some of the oldest galaxies we've ever seen when scientists first turned web toward apparently empty patches of Sky to look for these distant galaxies they found something very strange they didn't just find a few very old galaxies dating back as much to just a few hundred million years after the big bang they found far more of these galaxies than anyone had predicted according to Mela baggley of the University of Texas one of the leading Sears researchers the theoretical models didn't predict that these should be there we still don't yet know how you can see a Galaxy that bright that early one particular Galaxy jumped out of the Sears data straight away maisy's Galaxy named after the daughter of Steven felstein one of the researchers is 13 billion years old making it one of the oldest galaxies ever observed and it is much brighter and much Bluer Than anyone predicted as baggley said when we found maisy's Galaxy the surprising part was how is it in the universe it's exciting that this is the universe we live in it's a universe with a ton more galaxies than we thought web is able to detect extremely distant galaxies because its instruments operate in the infrared wavelength a small handful of extremely distant galaxies had been detected previously by the Hubble Space Telescope which operates primarily in the optical light wavelength which is equivalent to what human eyes can see but as galaxies move further and further away from us due to the expansion of the universe their light is shifted toward the red end of the Spectrum in a process called red shift the extremely distant galaxies that early Universe researchers are interested in have light that is red shifted so far that it is is no longer visible in the optical and can only be seen in the infrared so Hubble's instruments were pushed to the limits to detect even a few of these galaxies while web was able to detect many of them incredibly quickly within a few days of the telescope beginning its science operations when discussing these galaxies scientists typically talk about them in terms of their age rather than their distance you'll see researchers describe a Galaxy as being from the first few hundred million years after the big bang rather than being located billions of miles from Earth that's also because of the expansion of the universe which creates a moving frame of reference that makes it hard to describe distance meaningfully examples include galaxies like maisy's Galaxy which is described as being 13 billion years old the light has traveled 13 billion years to get to us but if we could see maisy's Galaxy today it is much much further away because in that time the universe has kept expanding and accelerated its expansion the time the light has spent traveling to us gives us more concrete information about when in the universe we're observing these galaxies initial estimations of the red shift and thus age of maisy's Galaxy were based on photometry which works by analyzing brightness in images while using a small number of wide frequency filters these calculations suggested the Galaxy had a red shift of 11.8 but finklestein and the sear team wanted a more accurate age estimation to do this they made follow-up observations with James web's near infrared spectrograph or n spec for short this allowed finlin and colleagues to look at spectral lines created in light data dictated by the absor abortions and emissions of chemical elements at specific wavelengths from there they could pinpoint the actual red shift of maisy's Galaxy it appeared to be 11.4 this means maisy's Galaxy is technically seen more recently in the universe than initially estimated by a factor of tens of millions of years nonetheless it is still considered immensely old the James web captured the Galaxy as it was just 390 million years after the big bang this impressive age places maisy's Galaxy among the four oldest galaxies in the universe that have had their ages confirmed by spectroscopy a technique that splits light into its component frequencies to better reveal its brightness heat and chemical composition while such galaxies don't yet pose problems for leading models of cosmology they suggest Galactic formation began earlier and proceeded faster than expected in the universe which theorists had previously predicted began churning out galaxies at the ripe age of 1 billion years after the big bang as Fabio pakuchi of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for astrophysics said we're seeing a rise of massive galaxies faster than we thought previously the ages of some of these early galaxies are estimated at just tens of millions of years this could have implications for large structures of dark matter known as Halos that sculpted early galaxies and for the nature of Dark Matter particles themselves one of the big open questions is what is dark matter says Sandro tachella of the University of Cambridge the first generation of galaxies is a sensitive probe for different Dark Matter models on the other hand we should be cautioned that some problematic and potentially model busting early Universe candidate galaxies still remain scientists had already produced models of what early galaxies would be like and web contradicted them almost immediately as soon as James web began looking for early galaxies it found far more of them than anyone had predicted and found that they were much brighter too light is a double-edged sword in the context of these galaxies it's what lets us study the galaxies but there's so much more of it than astronomers would have expected the bright of a Galaxy can be related to its mass because a Galaxy's light comes from Stars if you assume a certain average brightness and mass of a star you can roughly estimate the mass of a galaxy but much of the modeling astronomers have done up to this point has led them to believe that there wasn't enough time for Galaxies to get this massive in so little time according to Jorge Moreno an associate professor of astronomy at Pomona College it's like if you went to a kindergarten and you saw a teenager what's more today most galaxies are separated into two types spirals which are disc-like with arms of dust and gas and ellipticals which are more like spheres of smooth light until now scientists thought that any galaxies from this relatively early period in the history of the universe would have been too young to have been forced into that binary yet instead astronomers thought the galaxies would be blobs but under James web's views some of the early galaxies look a lot like galaxies in the local Universe they seem to have added structure and maybe even spiral arms that wasn't something we really expected the high level of structure and brightness in these galaxies is leading some astrophysicists to question the age of the universe in an attempt to explain the impossible massive galaxies existing so early in the timeline of the universe a researcher has posited that the universe is roughly twice as old as previously believed they pushed the age of the Universe from a spry 13.8 billion years old to roughly 26.7 billion years old that's an interesting scenario but it doesn't correspond to the evidences at hand so up to now there's currently no consensus on what is the root of the discrepancy between the models we we have and the data we observe with web the answer could be related to dark matter and its role in the early universe or it could be that the way early galaxies were formed was spurred on by forces that haven't been considered yet however it's worth noting that even before the James web Space Telescope scientists knew that the early Universe was a very different place from the universe today its galaxies were made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium where shaped by tendrils of dark matter and hosted enormous bright stars that lived fast and died young while the laws of physics haven't changed over the past billions of years the Scale of the Universe has and that affects how those physical laws apply to galaxies when the universe was smaller and denser that affected the ways in which stars form in complex ways as baggley explained if the universe is smaller the density inside G gxes and outside galaxies is probably higher if it's dense and hot the gas won't collapse to form Stars if it's dense and cold then you could get a ton more stars another way in which the early Universe was fundamentally different is in its overall chemical composition heavy elements like metals were almost entirely absent in the early Universe because these elements were primarily formed within stars and spread by their explosive deaths called Supernova a it took several generations of stars to spread these heavier elements through the universe and to be absorbed into Stars similar to those we see today the hypothetical earliest stars in existence are referred to as population three stars today's Young stars are population one stars and the numbering counts backward in age they were much bigger heavier and Bluer Than Stars today and they gave off more ionizing radiation those differences are because of the way stars generate heat and light in a process called Fusion if a star is made only of hydrogen and helium to do Fusion the star has to be hotter and denser than a star that has carbon nitrogen oxygen bagly explained there's a different chemical Pathway to create fusion and that requires a larger size and more mass to support it no one has ever observed a population three star before and finding one is one of the Holy Grails of modern astronomy but scientists I believe it could be possible to find one using web anyway James web was built primarily to transform our understanding of the early universe and Telltale evidence gathered by the James web Space Telescope suggests we're closer than ever before to finding elusive first stars of the universe all of this discussion of billion- year old old history might seem rather abstract but in fact it's directly relevant to understanding the universe as we see it today and as the James web Space Telescope is revealing in Greater detail than ever before that's because astronomy operates on such longtime scales that we can't watch objects like galaxies across their lifespans most galaxies we see around us today look like the Milky Way but we can't see them develop over time to study that that development we need to look for distant and ancient galaxies which Bagley refers to as baby pictures of the Milky Way this is all about understanding how our Milky Way formed it sounds cliche but before we can understand where we are and where we're going we need to understand where we came from in addition on the hunt for alien civilization NASA has just revealed that 17 discovered exoplanets could House Sub surface oceans buried below thick sheets of ice these worlds much like the icy moons of Jupiter could therefore be promising places to search for bios signatures chemical Signs of Life while the exact composition of these worlds remains unclear estimates of their surface temperatures from previous studies Point them being significantly colder than Earth they're also each less dense than Earth despite being being roughly the same size as our planet as Lin quick of NASA's GED space flight center said in a statement our analyses predict that these 17 worlds may have ice covered surfaces but receive enough internal heating from the decay of radioactive elements and tidal forces from their host stars to maintain internal oceans in other words while their host Stars may not provide conditions warm enough to keep water in liquid would form on their surfaces these planets May exhibit processes that can generate heat below their surface the stretching and compression of rock inside a planet as it gravitationally interacts with its Sun for instance could provide significant amounts of internal heat enough to sustain a subsurface ocean the radioactive decay of heavy elements inside the core of a planet can provide intrinsic heat as well thanks to the amount of internal heating they experience all planets in our study could also exhibit cryovolcanic eruptions in the form of geyser-like plumes quick said cryovolcanism meaning in short ice volcanoes the study Drew on what we know from the geyser activity of two of Jupiter's moons Europa and Enceladus two of the exoplanets named in the research Proxima centu B and lhs1 40b were particularly promising candidates for having oceans relatively near the surface since our models predict that oceans could be found relatively close to the surfaces of Proxima centor B and LHS 1140b and their rate of geyser activity could exceed europa's by hundreds to thousands of times telescopes are most likely to detect geological activity on these planets said quick follow-up observations of these worlds will likely include a astronomers capturing the emission Spectra of light traveling through these planets atmospheres chemicals and molecules erupted into the atmosphere from cryovolcanic activity May hold Clues as to whether life might exist in the cold dark depths of these worlds in a one-of-a-kind event scientists just announced that Mars's atmosphere once as thick as if not thicker than Earth's today is leaking into space about JY 11 K of our Mars atmosphere is pushed away every second by the incessant solar wind the Speedy stream of charged particles routinely blasted from the sun which pervade the solar system and even reach Beyond Pluto but for a rare 2 days last December some of that wind went away its sudden and dramatic disappearance caused the atmosphere on Mars's sun-facing side to swell by nearly four times its usual size from its usual 800 km to over 3,000 km The Peculiar event was recorded by a NASA Orbiter named Maven short for Mars atmosphere and volatile Evolution which has been observing both Mars's atmosphere and its response to the sun's Behavior since 2014 maven's data showed other aspects of the Martian System including the teardrop shaped magnetosphere the bow shock and the ionos sphere expanded similarly as Jasper halikas a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Iowa and a member of the maven team said we're really off the charts here this is something that we haven't seen at Mars before with Maven the atypical episode the first in nearly a decade of maven's career occurred after a fast moving region of a solar wind overtook its slower counterpart and swept up the lad's material leaving behind a sparse region the emptied storm reached Mars on dector 25 2022 giving scientists a thrilling front row seat to watch the planet's atmosphere balloon out the way it might have been if it were circling a less windy star according to helas who is leading a new study this was a Christmas present for us nature set up this perfect science experiment with maven's data of the unexpected Dynamics on Mars halikas and his colleagues studied how extreme solar events and their absence influen the planet's atmosphere an Insight valuable to understanding its Evolution the findings also have implications for our understanding of earthlike planets outside our solar system and how they interact with their host Stars the team shared on Monday we could look under the hood at what physics is going on how the Dynamics are working and really get a sense of those details said Maven team member Skyler shaver of the laboratory for atmospheric and space physics in Boulder 2 days after the almost vacant storm passed Mars the atmosphere around the red planet settled down to its original state once again but not before bouncing a little like a jiggling plate of Jell-O a similar storm struck Earth in 1999 when our planet's atmosphere grew to five times its normal size but there aren't often orbiting spacecraft positioned as well as Maven is now to study such events the new Atlas reported Shannon Curry the principal investigator for the maven Mission suspects events like this were common during Mars early Evolution 3 to 4 billion years ago when our sun was more fiery than it is now and perhaps blasted out storms once a week or even every day such extreme events were likely responsible for parching the red planet a world scientists presume once hosted liquid water and offered conditions friendly toward life extrapolating the latest Maven data to study Mars Evolution through time could shed light on how much its atmosphere eroded away and how fast the planet dried up Curry said Curry added events like this may occur multiple times in the next 2 years as the sun's activity climbs to its peak expected to occur in July 2025 if not late next year last as a piece of good new the Hubble Space Telescope following a string of setbacks concerning one of its directional instruments has now resumed its job of capturing deep space images NASA confirms that in a statement posted to the Hubble Space Telescope Blog the telescopes issues All Began on November 19th when one of the iconic observatory's three gyroscopes a trio that live on from an original set of six began providing faulty readings in general gyroscope Scopes are devices that use either circulating beams of light or rapidly spinning wheels to help scientists make sure an object is facing the direction they want it to face incorrect gyroscope readings on the Hubble telescope as you might imagine can therefore drastically affect science measurements to image a specific spot in deep space with this Earth orbiting telescope you'd have to make sure it's actually facing that spot in deep space thus Hubble entered safe mode on November 19th something that's programmed to happen automatically when certain issues arise with the observatory the team however was able to bring it back online the following day but things weren't looking good shortly after when gyro issues sent Hubble into yet another safe mode situation on November 21 the team brought Hubble back once more shortly after that only for the Beloved telescope to reach Retreat into its dark corner once again on November 23rd that most recent safe mode entrance was slightly worrying as it persisted for longer than the previous two dips it wasn't too worrying though because first of all this isn't the first time Hubble's Gyros have raised issues leading to a shutdown and secondly maybe most importantly The Observatory can actually function with only one gyroscope the team just uses three because it maximizes efficiency though it's been over three decades since Hubble began exploring the vibrant reaches of our universe and though a new observatory in town has been catching most of the spotlight recently this Reynolds WAP looking telescope is surely not finished yet that's all the information that we have for you today don't 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Channel: EYES 200M

Views: 672,499

Keywords: EYES 200M, SPACE, new discovery, Nasa, spacex, Universe news, Solar system, Elon Musk, Moon, Mars, Starship, SpaceX, Big Bang, james webb, universe news, explore 2023, star, galaxy, galaxies, black hole, redshift, universe, James Webb Just Detected A Huge Structure Older Than The Universe!

Id: mpWNVioeuSQ

Length: 26min 16sec (1576 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 19 2023