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Ancient Galaxy MoM-z14 confirmed as most distant object ever seen
Astronomers have confirmed that the galaxy MoM-z14 is the most distant object yet measured. This galaxy’s light has been traveling to us for 13.53 billion years, meaning we see MoM-z14 as it appeared just 280 million years after the Big Bang. And, thanks to the universe’s expansion, the galaxy is currently 33.8 billion light-years away.
An anomaly from the universe’s infancy, MoM-z14 isn’t at all what astronomers expected to find when they peered into the deepest depths of space.
It’s one of a group of extremely ancient but oddly well-developed galaxies imaged by the James Webb Space Telescope. They appear to be up to 13.5 billion years old, and are far more complex than cosmological theory says they should be. That’s why there have been doubts over whether the galaxies are truly that old. Have gravitational distortions been giving us a false picture?
To answer the question, astronomers designed and ran the “Mirage or Miracle” (MoM) survey. A group of dozens of international researchers used Webb’s spectroscopic instruments – tools that measure the chemical signatures hidden in light – to confirm that the light coming from MoM-z14 has, indeed, travelled for 13.53 billion years. That means MoM-z14 is about 97.8% as old as the universe.
The peer-reviewed findings from the survey were reported in the Open Journal of Astrophysics on January 28.
Is Galaxy MoM-z14 normal or unique?
The earliest galaxies imaged by Webb are more developed than theories predicted. Plus, there are too many of them. The newly published research sought, firstly, to discover if objects like MoM-z14 are actually as distant as they appear. Secondly, researchers wanted to find out if their unexpected structures are peculiar or commonplace. Lead author Rohan Naidu of MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research said:
With Webb, we are able to see farther than humans ever have before, and it looks nothing like what we predicted, which is both challenging and exciting.
Before Webb began observation, cosmological theory predicted there would be only a few developed galaxies so soon after the Big Bang. Instead, initial imagery revealed about 100 times more such objects than expected, including the galaxy MoM-z14. Data from Webb’s spectrographic camera allowed researchers to confirm whether these objects were as old as they appear, said Pascal Oesch of the University of Geneva, co-principal investigator of the survey:
We can estimate the distance of galaxies from images, but it’s really important to follow up and confirm with more detailed spectroscopy so that we know exactly what we are seeing, and when.
The objects really are from an era 280 million years after the beginning of everything. And that’s a discovery that prompts more exploration, said Jacob Shen, a postdoctoral researcher at MIT and a member of the research team:
There is a growing chasm between theory and observation related to the early universe, which presents compelling questions to be explored going forward.
Expect more discoveries from the more distant past
The data Webb has already returned are showing that the nature of early stars isn’t what we thought either. Stars in MoMz-14 appear to have more nitrogen than expected. Naidu said:
We can take a page from archeology and look at these ancient stars in our own galaxy like fossils from the early universe, except in astronomy we are lucky enough to have Webb seeing so far that we also have direct information about galaxies during that time. It turns out we are seeing some of the same features, like this unusual nitrogen enrichment.
Since there shouldn’t have been enough time to produce the amount of nitrogen seen in early stars, researchers are already reworking their theories on how it got there. They speculate there might have been enough dense gas to form nitrogen-generating supergiant stars very early.
More to come
More data are needed to unravel these mysteries of the early universe. And new astronomical instruments like the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will help provide that information. Yijia Li, a graduate student at the Pennsylvania State University and a member of the research team, said:
To figure out what is going on in the early universe, we really need more information — more detailed observations with Webb, and more galaxies to see where the common features are, which Roman will be able to provide. It’s an incredibly exciting time, with Webb revealing the early universe like never before and showing us how much there still is to discover.
That means Galaxy MoM-z14’s hold on the title of most distant object ever observed likely won’t last long. Roman is set to launch in May 2026. As it and Webb continue to explore the earliest era of the universe, more distant – and, therefore, older – objects will almost certainly be discovered.
Bottom line: Galaxy MoM-z14 – a bright galaxy that existed 280 million years after the Big Bang – is for now the most distant object ever measured by astronomers. It is currently 33.8 billion light years away.
Source A Cosmic Miracle: A Remarkably Luminous Galaxy at z spec = 14.44 Confirmed with JWST
Via NASA
Read more: 3 years of the Webb telescope: Here’s what it’s discovered