Webb telescope finds earliest galaxies, cosmic oddballsJames Webb Space Telescope saw two of the most distant galaxies ever – & a dazzling surprise.
These galaxies are significantly brighter than anyone predicted, challenging our idea of how the cosmos took shape in the aftermath of the big bang 13.8 billion years ago.
"The universe did not let us down," stated Tommaso Treu, principle investigator for the GLASS-JWST Early Release Science Program at UCLA.
Treu: "We found more distant galaxies than expected." "The universe formed galaxies quicker than scientists believed."
Many physicists believe the cosmos originated as a dense, hot bundle of stuff so compact it resembled a point.
This bundle expanded fast, forming a primordial soup of microscopic particles that eventually became the universe.
The new discoveries, unveiled by NASA at a news briefing Thursday, draw the curtain back on what the developing cosmos looked like a few hundred million years after its historic origin.
One of the galaxies is 350 million years old, making it the most distant ever discovered.
The second new galaxy is estimated to have existed roughly 400 million years after the formation of the cosmos.
Although 350 million years is an unimaginably long time after the big bang, it is comparatively early in the life of our universe. 13.8 billion years.
Garth Illingworth, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, helped conceive of the Webb telescope in the 1980s.
He continued, "I hope to locate more distant galaxies." Astronomers describe these galaxies as red.
Webb telescope finds earliest galaxies, cosmic oddballsJames Webb Space Telescope saw two of the most distant galaxies ever – & a dazzling surprise.