James Webb, an astronomer working at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has discovered a galaxy that could be so far away from Earth that it breaks physics as we know it today. If this galaxy is discovered to be what Webb thinks it might be, then the laws of time and space are going to have to be rewritten. To make things even more interesting, this discovery would have major implications on the theories proposed by Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton, the fathers of modern physics and relativity theory. Perhaps this new galaxy will show us that there are things beyond even what they could have imagined.
Results & Observations
When astronomer James Webb, who works at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., spotted a signal from a galaxy that doesn’t seem to exist—one that appears to be more distant and formed far earlier in time than it should be—he assumed there had been some sort of error. But after double-checking his work, he realized he had discovered something far more important: A galaxy that could break physics as we know it. The signal came from GN-z11, which is located about 13.4 billion light years away (about 150 million years after the Big Bang). It was first observed by Hubble in 2015 and is currently being observed by Hubble again for further research. To put its distance into perspective, GN-z11 is so far away that its light has taken almost 14 billion years to reach us. Because of how long it takes for light to travel such distances, astronomers can only see objects as they were when their light began its journey toward Earth. So if an object existed any later than when its light started traveling toward us, we wouldn’t be able to observe it with current technology or with telescopes like Hubble. If you look out in space, what you’re seeing is not just where [the galaxies] are now but also where they were 10 billion years ago, because that’s how long it took their light to get here, says Webb. So if I want to look back farther than 10 billion years ago, I need another telescope because Hubble can only see as far back as 10 billion years. In other words, GN-z11 shouldn’t even exist based on our understanding of physics. Our models suggest that there isn’t enough time between then and now for these stars to form. Based on those models, we would expect them to have formed 20–100 times earlier than they actually did. So clearly our understanding of cosmology—of how things come together over cosmic history—is incomplete in some way, because otherwise we would have expected to see these stars forming much earlier than we did.
Theoretical Explanations
The finding also may shed light on a major cosmic mystery: Why is there more matter than antimatter in our universe? In particle physics, matter and antimatter are two different types of particles. Matter particles have a counterpart with negative mass, while antimatter counterparts have positive mass. When matter and antimatter meet, they annihilate each other, releasing energy. So if an equal amount of matter and antimatter came together at the birth of our universe, all of it would have been destroyed. Yet somehow, some survived to create galaxies, stars and planets — including Earth. Scientists don’t know why we live in such a lopsided world — but Webb’s discovery could be a piece in solving that puzzle. If you look at a galaxy like ours and you look at its mass, only about one-sixth of that mass is normal matter — protons, neutrons and electrons, [David Spergel] said. The rest is something called dark matter and something called dark energy. We think both of those are manifestations of some kind of fundamental stuff we don’t understand yet. But what James Webb did was discover a whole new population of these things. If you can measure how much dark matter and dark energy exists in another galaxy, then maybe you can start to figure out what makes up these mysterious components of our own Milky Way. It’s not just that we might learn something from them; it’s actually that they might teach us something about ourselves. To do that, scientists will need to get better data. A telescope isn’t going to see through dust very well. We really need to go into space and get behind the dust clouds so we can directly image these things, [KIPAC astrophysicist Rachel Somerville] said.
Conclusions and Recommendations
The team’s results indicate that many of these galaxies could be giving off double, red-shifted spectra. This suggests two scenarios: Either these are galaxies which have become highly distorted due to a gravitational interaction with another galaxy or cluster (possibly one in our own neighborhood!) and contain a significant amount of dark matter, or they are normal galaxies which have been gravitationally lensed by an intervening mass such as an island universe or cluster of galaxies. In either case, it is clear that there is much more mass present than what we can see through even Hubble Space Telescope observations. We will continue to observe these galaxies for several months to better determine their nature before we can make any definitive conclusions about their properties. If these objects do indeed turn out to be strongly lensed galaxies, then they would provide us with an excellent laboratory for studying how massive objects bend light around them. If they prove instead to be heavily-distorted but otherwise typical galaxies, then we may need to rethink some of our current theories on structure formation in large clusters and high-redshift systems. It would also imply that supermassive black holes might form at earlier times than previously thought possible—an exciting prospect! Regardless of their ultimate fate, however, these discoveries show that we are still far from understanding all aspects of cosmology and galaxy evolution. For now, however, I am going to enjoy a few days off while my data sets process… and maybe get back into some writing of my own. As always, please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or comments regarding these observations.
