PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Early universe crackled with bursts of star formation, Webb shows

Early universe crackled with bursts of star formation, Webb shows
2023-06-05
(Press-News.org) Among the most fundamental questions in astronomy is: How did the first stars and galaxies form? NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is already providing new insights into this question. One of the largest programs in Webb’s first year of science is the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey, or JADES, which will devote about 32 days of telescope time to uncover and characterize faint, distant galaxies. While the data is still coming in, JADES already has discovered hundreds of galaxies that existed when the universe was less than 600 million years old. The team also has identified galaxies sparkling with a multitude of young, hot stars.

 

“With JADES, we want to answer a lot of questions, like: How did the earliest galaxies assemble themselves? How fast did they form stars? Why do some galaxies stop forming stars?” said Marcia Rieke of the University of Arizona in Tucson, co-lead of the JADES program.

 

Star Factories

 

Ryan Endsley of the University of Texas at Austin led an investigation into galaxies that existed 500 to 850 million years after the big bang. This was a crucial time known as the Epoch of Reionization. For hundreds of millions of years after the big bang, the universe was filled with a gaseous fog that made it opaque to energetic light. By one billion years after the big bang, the fog had cleared and the universe became transparent, a process known as reionization. Scientists have debated whether active, supermassive black holes or galaxies full of hot, young stars were the primary cause of reionization.

 

As part of the JADES program, Endsley and his colleagues studied these galaxies with Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument to look for signatures of star formation – and found them in abundance. “Almost every single galaxy that we are finding shows these unusually strong emission line signatures indicating intense recent star formation. These early galaxies were very good at creating hot, massive stars,” said Endsley.

 

These bright, massive stars pumped out torrents of ultraviolet light, which transformed surrounding gas from opaque to transparent by ionizing the atoms, removing electrons from their nuclei. Since these early galaxies had such a large population of hot, massive stars, they may have been the main driver of the reionization process. The later reuniting of the electrons and nuclei produces the distinctively strong emission lines.

 

Endsley and his colleagues also found evidence that these young galaxies underwent periods of rapid star formation interspersed with quiet periods where fewer stars formed. These fits and starts may have occurred as galaxies captured clumps of the gaseous raw materials needed to form stars. Alternatively, since massive stars quickly explode, they may have injected energy into the surrounding environment periodically, preventing gas from condensing to form new stars.

 

The Early Universe Revealed

 

Another element of the JADES program involves the search for the earliest galaxies that existed when the universe was less than 400 million years old. By studying these galaxies, astronomers can explore how star formation in the early years after the big bang was different from what is seen in current times. The light from faraway galaxies is stretched to longer wavelengths and redder colors by the expansion of the universe – a phenomenon called redshift. By measuring a galaxy’s redshift, astronomers can learn how far away it is and, therefore, when it existed in the early universe. Before Webb, there were only a few dozen galaxies observed above a redshift of 8, when the universe was younger than 650 million years old, but JADES has now uncovered nearly a thousand of these extremely distant galaxies.

 

The gold standard for determining redshift involves looking at a galaxy’s spectrum, which measures its brightness at a myriad of closely spaced wavelengths. But a good approximation can be determined by taking photos of a galaxy using filters that each cover a narrow band of colors to get a handful of brightness measurements. In this way, researchers can determine estimates for the distances of many thousands of galaxies at once.

 

Kevin Hainline of the University of Arizona in Tucson and his colleagues used Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument to obtain these measurements, called photometric redshifts, and identified more than 700 candidate galaxies that existed when the universe was between 370 million and 650 million years old. The sheer number of these galaxies was far beyond predictions from observations made before Webb’s launch. The observatory’s exquisite resolution and sensitivity are allowing astronomers to get a better view of these distant galaxies than ever before.

 

“Previously, the earliest galaxies we could see just looked like little smudges. And yet those smudges represent millions or even billions of stars at the beginning of the universe,” said Hainline. “Now, we can see that some of them are actually extended objects with visible structure. We can see groupings of stars being born only a few hundred million years after the beginning of time.”

 

“We’re finding star formation in the early universe is much more complicated than we thought,” added Rieke.

 

These results are being reported at the 242nd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

 

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

END

[Attachments] See images for this press release:
Early universe crackled with bursts of star formation, Webb shows Early universe crackled with bursts of star formation, Webb shows 2 Early universe crackled with bursts of star formation, Webb shows 3

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

NASA’s Webb Space Telescope peers behind bars

NASA’s Webb Space Telescope peers behind bars
2023-06-05
A delicate tracery of dust and bright star clusters threads across this image from the James Webb Space Telescope. The bright tendrils of gas and stars belong to the barred spiral galaxy NGC 5068, whose bright central bar is visible in the upper left of this image – a composite from two of Webb’s instruments. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson revealed the image Friday during an event with students at the Copernicus Science Centre in Warsaw, Poland.   NGC 5068 lies around 20 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. This image of the central, bright star-forming regions ...

New digital tool enables farmer’s decisions for sustainable agriculture

2023-06-05
A new ‘digital decision support tool’ enabling the transition towards more diversified and sustainable agricultural systems has been developed by an international team of researchers from Germany, France, and Czech Republic.   The research led by Dr Ioanna Mouratiadou from the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research, and published in Environmental Science and Ecotechnology, presents the ‘Digital Agricultural Knowledge and Information System (DAKIS)’ as a data integration ...

CRISPR/Cas9 reveals a key gene involved in the evolution of coral skeleton formation

CRISPR/Cas9 reveals a key gene involved in the evolution of coral skeleton formation
2023-06-05
Baltimore, MD—New work led by Carnegie’s Phillip Cleves uses cutting-edge CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing tools to reveal a gene that’s critical to stony corals’ ability to build their reef architectures. It is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Stony corals are marine invertebrates that build large skeletons, which form the basis of reef ecosystems. These biodiversity hotspots are home to about a quarter of known marine species. “Coral reefs have ...

Human factors affect bees’ communication, researchers find

Human factors affect bees’ communication, researchers find
2023-06-05
Human influences have the potential to reduce the effectivity of communication in bees adding further stress to struggling colonies, according to new analysis. Scientists at the University of Bristol studying honeybees, bumblebees and stingless bees found that variation in communication strategies are explained by differences in the habitats that bees inhabit and differences in the social lifestyle such colony size and nesting habits. The findings, published today in PNAS, reveal that anthropogenic change, such as habitat conversion, climate change and the use of agrochemicals, are altering the world bees occupy, and it is becoming increasingly clearer that this affects communication ...

Coaxing hair growth in aging hair follicle stem cells

2023-06-05
·  Regulating cell mechanics stimulates hair growth in mice ·  Next step will be testing if delivering microRNA via nanoparticles grows hair ·  Potential for human hair growth   CHICAGO --- Just as people’s joints can get stiff as they age and make it harder for them to move around, hair follicle stem cells also get stiff, making it harder for them to grow hair, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study.  But if the hair follicle’s stem cells are softened, ...

Cure Mito Foundation launches resource on Leigh syndrome

Cure Mito Foundation launches resource on Leigh syndrome
2023-06-05
McKinney, TX., June  5, 2023 - The Cure Mito Foundation, a parent-led organization dedicated to advancing research and treatments for Leigh syndrome, has launched the first-of-its-kind online resource about Leigh syndrome,  the  most common type of pediatric mitochondrial disease.  The free resource, “About Leigh Syndrome” (https://www.aboutleighsyndrome.com), serves as a central place where patients, caregivers and doctors can find information on Leigh syndrome, including its symptoms, diagnosis, treatment options, and more. Translation ...

Tools to assess crime risk for young cohorts are likely to fail over time if they ignore social change

2023-06-05
Risk assessment instruments (RAIs) are widely used to inform high-stakes decision making in the criminal justice system and other areas, such as health care and child welfare. These tools typically assume a relation between predictors and outcomes that does not vary with time. But because societies change, this assumption may not hold in all settings, generating what a new study calls cohort bias—a bias resulting from cohort-wide influences not experienced by past or future cohorts. The study, by researchers ...

Direct air capture technology licensed to Knoxville-based Holocene

Direct air capture technology licensed to Knoxville-based Holocene
2023-06-05
An innovative and sustainable chemistry developed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory for capturing carbon dioxide from air has been licensed to Holocene, a Knoxville-based startup focused on designing and building plants that remove carbon dioxide from atmospheric air. “ORNL is tackling climate change by developing numerous technologies that reduce or eliminate emissions,” said Susan Hubbard, ORNL deputy for science and technology. “But with billions ...

Fetal exposure to PCBs affects hearing health later in life

2023-06-05
Music, mice, and microscopic imaging combine to provide new insight into the effects of environmental chemicals on hearing loss. Researchers at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology found that early exposure to an environmental chemical called polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, made it more difficult for mice to recover from sound-related trauma sustained later in life. Their paper appears in the Journal of Neuroscience. PCBs are carcinogenic compounds formerly used in industrial and consumer products. Although they were banned in the United States in 1979 and haven’t seen industrial use in decades, their highly ...

Quantum computers are better at guessing, new study demonstrates

2023-06-05
Daniel Lidar, the Viterbi Professor of Engineering at USC and Director of the USC Center for Quantum Information Science & Technology, and first author Dr. Bibek Pokharel, a Research Scientist at IBM Quantum, achieved this quantum speedup advantage in the context of a “bitstring guessing game.”  They managed strings up to 26 bits long, significantly larger than previously possible, by effectively suppressing errors typically seen at this scale. (A bit is a binary number that is either zero or one). Quantum computers promise to solve certain problems with an advantage that increases as the ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

When words make you sick

Removal of incorrect penicillin allergy labels by non-specialist healthcare professional feasible

Is your partner’s disturbed sleep keeping you up at night? Letting go of unattainable dreams may keep you both happy in bed

Molecular orientation is key: shining new light on electron behavior using 2-photon photoemission spectroscopy

Continuous non-invasive glucose sensing on the horizon with the development of a new optical sensor.

Brain recordings in people before surgery reveal how all minds plan what to say prior to speaking

A KAIST-Seoul National University Hospital research team develops a computational workflow that predicts metabolites and metabolic pathways associated with somatic mutations in cancers

Bendable energy storage materials by cool science

Inorganic nitrate can help protect patients against kidney damage caused during coronary angiographic procedures

Active social lives help dementia patients, caregivers thrive

New technique measures psilocybin potency of mushrooms

UC Irvine-led research team discovers role of key enzymes that drive cancer mutations

All creatures great and small: Sequencing the blue whale and Etruscan shrew genomes

Sustainable solution for wastewater polluted by dyes used in many industries

Food companies’ sponsorship of children’s sports encourages children to buy their products, Canadian research suggests

USC receives $3.95 million CIRM grant for organoid resource center

New research finds boreal arctic wetlands are producing more methane over time

TLI Investigator Dr. Wei Yan named Editor-in-Chief of the Andrology Journal

New study reveals insights into COVID-19 antibody response durability

Climate change alters the hidden microbial food web in peatlands

Text nudges can increase uptake of COVID-19 boosters– if they play up a sense of ownership of the vaccine

A new study shows how neurochemicals affect fMRI readings

Digital reminders for flu vaccination improves turnout, but not clinical outcomes in older adults

Avatar will not lie... or will it? Scientists investigate how often we change our minds in virtual environments

8-hour time-restricted eating linked to a 91% higher risk of cardiovascular death

Alternative tidal wetlands in plain sight overlooked Blue Carbon superstars

The majority of Americans do not support anti-democratic behavior, even when elected officials do

Genes identified that allow bacteria to thrive despite toxic heavy metal in soil

Scientists’ discovery could reduce dependence on animals for vital anti-blood clot drug

Artificial streams reveal how drought shapes California’s alpine ecosystems

[Press-News.org] Early universe crackled with bursts of star formation, Webb shows