from the records-are-made-to-be-broken dept.
The galaxy formed within about 325 million years of the big bang:
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has spotted the most distant galaxies ever confirmed. While it has seen many galaxies that seem extraordinarily far away, these are the first ones with evidence proving that they are as distant as they appear.
Astronomers measure the distances to cosmic objects using a metric called redshift. Because of the expansion of the universe, the more distant an object is from Earth, the faster it moves away from us. Similar to the Doppler effect, in which a sound seems to rise or fall in pitch depending on whether it is moving towards or away from the listener, the colour of the light coming from a galaxy becomes redder the faster it is speeding away. By comparing how red a galaxy appears to calculations of its actual colour, astronomers can determine how distant a galaxy actually is.
In early observations of galaxies by JWST, astronomers could only make an approximation of each galaxy's redshift because they did not have detailed data on the spectra of the light coming from those galaxies. Those observations provided hints of galaxies with redshifts of 12 and above, meaning they seem to be more than 30 million light years away and would have formed within 400 million years of the big bang – but many scientists viewed those findings with scepticism because of the lack of precise confirmation.
"It was crucial to prove that these galaxies do, indeed, inhabit the early universe," said Emma Curtis-Lake at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK in a NASA blog post. "It's very possible for closer galaxies to masquerade as very distant galaxies."
Now, as part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), researchers have confirmed the redshifts of four extremely distant galaxies, ranging from about 10.4 to 13.2. That means that they formed between 325 million and 450 million years of the big bang. The previous record for highest confirmed redshift was about 11.
"These are by far the faintest infrared spectra ever taken," said Stefano Carniani at Scuola Normale Superiore in Italy. The observations took 28 hours over three days and covered 250 faint galaxies in total, and another set of observations is planned for 2023. It is expected to confirm even more of these distant galaxies, which will teach us about the early days of galaxy formation and how the most distant galaxies differ from those in our cosmic neighbourhood.
(Score: 3, Informative) by inertnet on Tuesday December 13 2022, @02:18PM (8 children)
This looks like an error in TFA, orders of magnitude off:
(Score: 2) by OrugTor on Tuesday December 13 2022, @03:01PM (7 children)
A quick Google brings up GN-z11 at 32 billion miles distance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 13 2022, @03:12PM
It is all true:
"32 billion" _is_ "more than 30 million".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 13 2022, @03:47PM
A light-year, alternatively spelled light year, is a large unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equivalent to about 9.46 trillion kilometers, or 5.88 trillion miles [wikipedia.org]
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you do the math
(Score: 3, Insightful) by zocalo on Tuesday December 13 2022, @03:51PM (4 children)
For bonus points, does anyone want to have a crack at explaining how we can observe something 32 billion light years away when the universe is only around 13.8b years old while the rest of us get some popcorn for the inevitable way that'll go?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 4, Funny) by nostyle on Tuesday December 13 2022, @04:17PM
Easy. JWST uses mirrors. Objects in mirror MAY BE closer than they appear.
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What do I win?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SomeRandomGeek on Tuesday December 13 2022, @04:55PM (1 child)
Sure. I'll have a go. The universe is expanding. When the light left the other galaxy, the distance between the two galaxies was 13.2 billion light years. In the 13.2 billion years that it took for the light to get from there to here, that distance expanded by 19 billion light years. The other galaxy is now 32 billion light years away.
That's an oversimplification, because the universe was expanding both in front of and behind the light as it traveled, but you get the idea.
(Score: 2) by SomeRandomGeek on Tuesday December 13 2022, @05:19PM
Apparently, you can observe things up to 46 billion light years away, if you squint. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday December 15 2022, @07:08AM
Inflation is a bitch. She is much nastier bitch than most youngsters could imagine even in their worst nightmares. However, they will learn one day.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 13 2022, @03:30PM
https://osr.org/blog/astronomy/the-center-of-the-universe-where-exactly-is-it/ [osr.org]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday December 13 2022, @05:52PM (9 children)
Isn't 'red shift' affected by dust, gravity and (God forbid) 'Dark Matter'? (Just kidding: we all know DM is a unicorn.)
Can they REALLY guarantee the distance?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 13 2022, @06:39PM
I am prepared to allow some margin of error.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday December 13 2022, @08:38PM (5 children)
Dark matter isn't a unicorn, it's MAGIC, when "magic" is defined as anything you don't understand. "Dark" simply means "we don't have the tiniest clue what this stuff is... or if it's even 'stuff' at all." It's a placeholder to hand-wave their ignorance away; "this value should be n but it isn't..."
Impeach Donald Palpatine and his sidekick Elon Vader
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 14 2022, @09:18AM (4 children)
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday December 16 2022, @09:50PM (3 children)
As in a couple of decades ago when I was visiting my little sister, who was showing me her new computer, and her four year old grandson asked how computers work. She shrugged, and said, "it's magic".
Nobody knows what is causing the calculation deviations, but whatever it is has to have a name. "Dark matter" and "dark energy" are as good as anything until they learn more.
Impeach Donald Palpatine and his sidekick Elon Vader
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 16 2022, @11:33PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 17 2022, @08:33PM (1 child)
It's not magic to me, but it is to most people.
Impeach Donald Palpatine and his sidekick Elon Vader
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 18 2022, @03:38PM
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Wednesday December 14 2022, @01:49AM
Dust absorbs light but doesn't change the wavelength. Gravity wells change the wavelength but for comparing one galaxy to another that doesn't come into the picture. I don't know about dark matter and the first few Google results were obvious reeking garbage.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Wednesday December 14 2022, @01:52AM
Oh, and there's a more direct answer to your question. There are objects of known intrinsic brightness (search on "standard candles") and comparing that to apparent brightness gives you another measure of distance (which intervening dust would interfere with). AFAIK the brightness measures of distance line up with redshifts.