The discovery suggests the earliest galaxies formed more quickly after the Big Bang than previously thought.
An illustration shows carbon PAH molecules surrounding early galaxies seen by the James Webb Space Telescope.Using the powerful space telescope, a team of astronomers spotted signs of the element that forms the backbone of all life in ten different galaxies that existed as early as 1 billion years after the Big Bang. could shake up theories surrounding the chemical evolution of the universe.
Conventional models of the universe's chemical evolution suggest that heavy elements like carbon and oxygen are forged in the nuclear furnaces at the heart of stars. When the first stars ran out of the fuel forand reached the end of their lives, they exploded in supernovas dispersing the material they had forged through the cosmos. This stellar matter is integrated into interstellar dust.
When dense patches of this dust collapse, this material becomes the building blocks of the next generation ofThis is challenged by the findings reached by Witstok and colleagues as some of the galaxies they saw PAH dust in are estimated to be somewhere in the region of 10 million years old. That implies there must be a creation and dispersal method for carbon that works on a relatively short time scale.
The JWST is the most sensitive infrared space telescope ever placed into space and the only one capable of resolving features like these carbon fingerprints in the light from such distant galaxies.
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