The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has unveiled a revolutionary map of the Universe – the most detailed and largest in history. The telescope managed to capture nearly 800,000 galaxies in a section of the sky barely larger than 7.5 times the area of the Moon. The COSMOS-Web project significantly surpasses the legendary Hubble Ultra-Deep Field, which contained “only” 15,000 galaxies.
“We wanted to create a deep view of space on a scale that was previously impossible,” explains physicist Caitlin Casey of the University of California, Santa Barbara, co-leader of COSMOS-Web. “If Hubble’s field of view were on a regular sheet of paper, our map would be a 4×4 meter mural! It’s impressively large.”
This “mural” is a window into the past, 13 billion years ago. JWST was able to pierce through the opaque fog of the early Universe to see the Cosmic Dawn era — the first billion years after the Big Bang. The telescope’s ability to detect infrared light stretched by the expansion of the Universe makes it an ideal instrument for such observations.
However, the JWST data brought not only excitement, but also a new mystery. Astronomers have discovered an incredible number of fully formed galaxies in an extremely young Universe in a photo. This contradicts modern theories of their evolution.
“After the Big Bang, time had to pass for matter to gather under the influence of gravity, galaxies to form, and stars to ignite. We know this time scale,“ says Casey. ”But the big surprise is that JWST sees 10 times more galaxies than expected at such distances. We also discovered supermassive black holes that are invisible to Hubble.“
This unexpected abundance of galaxies in the early Universe challenges our understanding of how quickly the first objects formed. Even a single formed galaxy in that era would have been a challenge, but their enormous number represents a real revolution in astronomy.
Anyone can try to solve the mystery, as the observation data is publicly available. The entire COSMOS-Web information database, including the interactive map, is available online free of charge to all scientists and enthusiasts.
The discoveries of James Webb show that we have only begun to touch the surface of a vast field of unknown knowledge and unsolved mysteries about the Cosmic Dawn. The most surprising thing is probably ahead.
Earlier, we reported on how James Webb would help determine the number of galaxies in the Universe.
According to ucsb.edu
