Ancient Galaxies Challenging Cosmic Theories

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the largest and most advanced space telescope ever constructed, has been making remarkable discoveries since its launch in December 2021. Among its achievements is the identification of the earliest and most distant galaxies known, which formed just 300 million years after the Big Bang.

When we observe distant objects in space, we are also looking far back in time. This is because the light from these objects takes billions of years to reach our telescopes. Through the JWST, astronomers have detected several of these ancient galaxies, providing us a glimpse of the universe as it appeared shortly after its inception.

Surprising Brightness of Early Galaxies
The data collected by the JWST aligns well with existing theories of cosmology—the study of the universe’s origin and evolution—and galaxy formation. However, these observations have also brought some surprises. Notably, many of these early galaxies are much brighter than expected, challenging previous assumptions about galaxy brightness and activity shortly after the Big Bang.     READ MORE...

Our Universe is OLDER Than Originally Believed

In a groundbreaking discovery, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has presented data that directly challenges our current understanding of the universe. For years, cosmologists have pegged the universe's age at approximately 13.8 billion years. Yet, the new JWST findings suggest that this may be a vast underestimation. But how has one telescope managed to disrupt such a long-held belief?


The universe's secrets are vast, but none has been as puzzling as the presence of 'impossible early galaxies'—so named due to their peculiar formation periods.


According to existing models, these galaxies, emerging during the cosmic dawn, roughly 500 to 800 million years post-big bang, shouldn't have evolved disks and bulges so quickly. "It's akin to seeing a toddler with the wisdom of an octogenarian," says a scientist, explaining the paradox.     READ MORE...

Galaxy with Impossible Light Signature

This region of space, viewed first iconically by Hubble and later by JWST, shows an animation that switches between the two. Both images still have fundamental limitations, as they were acquired from within our inner Solar System, where the presence of zodiacal light influences the noise floor of our instruments and cannot easily be removed. The extra presence of point-like red objects in JWST images, also known as “little red dots,” has finally been explained, but other puzzles still remain.






Since its launch in December of 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has spotted record-setting objects all across the Universe, including at the greatest distances ever seen.

Many distant galaxies are energetic and show signatures of emission lines from specific atoms and molecules, particularly hydrogen. However, the Lyman-α line has never been seen earlier than 550 million years after the Big Bang.

Until now. With the discovery and spectroscopic follow-up on galaxy JADES-GS-z13-1-LA, we now have strong evidence for that emission line from a galaxy just 326 million years after the Big Bang. The question is: how?              READ MORE...

The Early Universe at Cosmic Dawn

The Cosmic Gems is one of the most highly magnified objects in space, thanks to a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. (Image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Bradley (STScI), A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the Cosmic Spring collaboration)





Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have observed five extremely dense proto-globular clusters along a hair-thin arc of glittering stars. The discovery could help them understand how the earliest galaxies formed.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has discovered what could be the earliest star clusters in the universe.  JWST spotted the five proto-globular clusters — swarms of millions of stars bound together by gravity — inside the Cosmic Gems arc, a galaxy that formed just 460 million years after the Big Bang.


The Cosmic Gems arc gets its name from its appearance: When seen from our solar system, the star-studded galaxy looks like a hair-thin crescent due to the powerful gravitational influence of a foreground galaxy, which magnifies and distorts the distant galaxy's appearance.     READ MORE...

Large Structure in Space

The universe is more connected than you might think: In recent years, scientists have used new tools and techniques to map the “cosmic web,” which is made up of intertwined strands of gas structures known as filaments that link galaxies. Now, a team of researchers have identified a new “large-scale structure” in the universe that they call the “Cosmic Vine.”

The researchers hail from numerous universities and institutions across Denmark, Chile, the U.K., and the Netherlands. They published a preprint of their work to the arXiv server on November 8. According to the study, the Cosmic Vine was spotted after poring over data collected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), humanity’s most powerful tool for peering into the far reaches of space and time.  READ MORE...

IMAX Movie DEEP SKY

Featured in the IMAX® documentary DEEP SKY, this mosaic image stretches 340 light-years across. JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) displays the Tarantula Nebula star-forming region in a new light, including tens of thousands of never-before-seen young stars that were previously shrouded in cosmic dust. [Photo: NASA]




Director Nathaniel Kahn probed the world of art sales in 2018’s The Price of Everything and the search for extraterrestrial life in 2021’s Emmy-winning Hunt for Planet B. His latest film, however, goes where no man has gone before: a million miles from Earth.


Deep Sky, a 40-minute Imax original documentary about NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) that opened yesterday, showcases the mind-blowing images captured by the $10-billion telescope, which started beaming pictures of stars, nebulae, galaxies, planets, and a massive black hole back to Earth in July 2022. 

It is surely the most expensive “camera” Kahn, or any filmmaker, has had the privilege to work with, and viewed on nearly 100-foot-tall screens, the footage becomes transporting.


Kahn, who also wrote and produced the film, spoke with Fast Company about what drew him to the project, what the telescope’s “non-optical” electromagnetic spectrum revealed, and why it gives him hope for life on Earth.  READ MORE...

Telescopes Uses Ripples in TIME

The first JWST image of Earendel, the most distant star known in our universe, 

lensed and magnified ... NASA, ESA, CSA, STSCI

Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have imaged the most distant star ever observed thanks to a a ripple in spacetime that creates extreme magnification.


It’s currently 28 billion light-years away and its light has traveled 12.9 billion years into JWST’s optics. It existed just 900 million years after the big bang in a galaxy astronomers have nicknamed the Sunrise Arc.

The image of WHL0137-LS, above, was produced from over three hours of observations last weekend—but it’s not the star you think! Ignore the spiky star and instead go to the lower right-hand side (see below).


The ancient star is estimated to have a mass greater than 50 times the mass of the Sun.


Better known as “Earendel,” which means “morning star” or “rising light” in old English—was gravitationally lensed and magnified by a massive galaxy cluster called WHL0137–08 (a.k.a. “Sunrise Arc”) in the foreground.  READ MORE...