Miracle or mirage: here is the oldest known galaxy, seen by James-Webb!

The quest for our origins requires the deep understanding of what the universe is and how it has formed to become what we see. The one that astronomers can observe with powerful telescopes is already very far from time that our human eyes perceive.
The limit of the speed of light means that the more we look at, the more we see the past and therefore a time closer to the beginnings of the universe.

This is why the hunt for the first galaxies is so important. It is even one of the main objectives of the space telescope James-Webbthe most technologically advanced of all time.

The universe was 50 times younger on the image where we see this galaxy!

The golden mirror with the gold of the NASA infrared telescope has just broken its own record by taking us to only 280 million years after the Big Bang, that is more than 13.48 billion years of summer 2025 that is looming! Let us realize that the universe was then 50 times younger than today …

Here is Mom-Z14 the oldest galaxy (confirmed) never imagined

In the image above we can see a history of the most distant, therefore old galaxies detections, classified according to their lag towards red (see below). First thanks to the Hubble telescope with GN-Z11, 13.4 billion years ago, then today Mom-Z14.4 with the James-Webb.

We can say that from 13.4 billion years to 13.48 billion years ago, and that the feat is not so impressive. Let’s get off. First of all, GN-Z11 was at the limits of what Hubble could capture in terms of infrared, it is too weak for it to go beyond. Then, the more we want to dive further in the past and the more dark the universe, filled with obscuring dust and the distant the infrared.

With Mom-Z14 we also arrive at the limits of James-Webb, beyond it will be very difficult to discriminate A distant galaxy candidate of a closer gas cloud and dust.

Mirage or miracle of Mom-Z14?

We will have noticed that all the galaxies of these first ages in the universe have a small name which contains the letter “Z”. This is the letter used by astronomers to symbolize the red gap: it is the phenomenon of stretching the wavelength of light because of the expansion of the universe occurring between the moment when it is emitted and the moment when we capture it.

This red lag is 14.44, confirmed by spectroscopy.

Now why Mom? It comes from a study called mirage or miracle (in English), thus probably named because there could be doubts about the reality of these galaxies so early and bright that we can perceive them.
Today that it is confirmed, it therefore belongs to the miracle category than Mirage!

We can also think that Mom is well suited for such an old galaxy, almost the mother of the galaxies …

A miracle that leads to Grail?

Astronomers show that most of the light emitted by Mom-Z14 comes from its stars and not from its nucleus (it is not an AGN whose supermassive black hole emits a lot of radiation). This suggests something essential: its light can be emitted by primitive supermassive stars, the Grail of astrophysics.

The galaxy spectrum also shows a higher nitrogen/carbon ratio than in the sun, but close to that of the old globular clusters of the Milky Way, suggesting that the latter and Mom-Z14 have formed in similar environments …
Another fascinating track for future studies.

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