James Webb Space Telescope makes 'weird' discovery from beginning of the universe that has left scientists puzzled
Humanity's best piece of technology when it comes to exploring the universe, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), has made a brand new discovery that scientists have been forced to label as 'weird'.
The bizarre discovery has seen American space agency NASA describe it as 'something unprecedented'.
Since late 2021, the $10 billion (£7.5 billion) satellite has been exploring the universe, sending back images of deep space to Earth.
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Some of things it has found have been absolutely remarkable, with scientists labelling certain discoveries as 'jaw-dropping'.
Operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, it is the heir to the Hubble Space Telescope that was first launched in to space back in 1990.
And after making discoveries from close to the beginning of time that feels like the stuff of science fiction, the discoveries keep on coming as Webb keeps on searching.
The latest discovery by JWST concerns a galaxy known as GS-NDG-9422 (9422), with the image in question coming from just one billion years after the Big Bang itself.
The galaxy is full of huge stars burning twice as hot than anything close to our own galaxy.
And now, NASA says the discovery from Webb 'may be a missing-link phase of galactic evolution' in showing us how our galaxies looked before their current status. Mega.
Concerning the 'missing link', NASA explains that it could help us understand how we went from the universe’s first stars to 'familiar, well-established galaxies'.
Lead researcher Alex Cameron, of the University of Oxford, said: "My first thought in looking at the galaxy’s spectrum was, ‘that’s weird,’ which is exactly what the Webb telescope was designed to reveal: totally new phenomena in the early universe that will help us understand how the cosmic story began."
What does it mean in normal speak? Well, the stars in galaxy 9422 are terrorising huge gas clouds surrounding them with humungous quantities of light, which in turn heats the clouds. This then heats these clouds up, outshining the very stars themselves.
This is big, and could be a indicator at to what comes after the stars shine bright, as scientists cannot be sure what comes after stars began coming together to form galaxies as we know them.
Cameron's colleague at Oxford, Dr Harley Katz, added: "It looks like these stars must be much hotter and more massive than what we see in the local universe, which makes sense because the early universe was a very different environment."
Cameron reached out to Dr Katz to discuss the 'strange' data.
Working together, their team found that computer models of cosmic gas clouds heated by very hot, massive stars, to an extent that the gas shone brighter than the stars, was nearly a perfect match to Webb’s observations.
In the universe close to what we call home, your typical hot, massive stars have a temperature ranging between 70,000 to 90,000 degrees Fahrenheit (40,000 to 50,000 degrees Celsius).
According to the team, galaxy 9422 has stars hotter than 140,000 degrees Fahrenheit (80,000 degrees Celsius).
Dr Kats said: "The universe's stars are different than what we are familiar with - the exotic stars in this galaxy could be a guide for understanding how galaxies transitioned from primordial stars to the types of galaxies we already know."
Topics: James Webb Space Telescope, Space, NASA, Technology, Science
Tom Earnshaw