After 13.4 billion years, strange object holds the key to life

(NLDO) - Scientists have observed something that has turned the history of the universe upside down inside the super-red object JADES-GS-z14-0.

The super-red object JADES-GS-z14-0 is the most distant, ancient galaxy ever observed by humanity.

Light from this galaxy has traveled a record distance to reach the James Webb Space Telescope, showing us what it looked like 13.4 billion years ago, when the universe was just 2% of its current age.

But that image has upset the cosmic timeline that humanity has written for so long.

An illustration depicting an incredible object from the early universe - the galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0 - Photo: ESO

According to Sci-News , a research team led by astronomer Sander Schouws from the Leiden Observatory (Netherlands) has discovered the most important key to life on Earth and possibly many other planets today, inside JADES-GS-z14-0: Oxygen.

The existence of oxygen in galaxies may be normal today, but it was almost completely absurd 13.4 billion years ago.

According to previously widely accepted theories, at that time, when the universe was only 400 million years old, it was still the "dark ages", a period when no stars had yet been born to light up space.

At that time, the universe was thought to be extremely chemically poor, consisting almost entirely of hydrogen and helium.

Heavier elements are thought to have appeared only after the first generation of stars were born and forged them in their cores, then died and released the elements into space, creating the raw materials for subsequent generations of stars to forge even heavier elements.

The very existence of JADES-GS-z14-0 seems to shatter these theories. The fact that it possesses oxygen is even more shocking.

Astronomers still hope to capture oxygen from distant worlds, as it is one of the potential biosignatures.

But that was not in a world that belonged to the Cosmic Dawn, the first billion years after the Big Bang.

“It's like finding a teenager where you'd expect a baby,” the authors likened.

Two additional observations using the ALMA observatory in Chile also showed that JADES-GS-z14-0 has about 10 times more heavy elements than expected.

The discovery shows that it formed and matured very quickly, far beyond familiar cosmological models, adding to a growing body of evidence that the early universe evolved more quickly than we thought.

Source: https://nld.com.vn/hien-ve-sau-134-ti-nam-vat-the-la-mang-chia-khoa-su-song-196250322064911972.htm