September 29, 2023
Foto da galáxia  GLASS-Z13

What is known about the oldest galaxy in the universe

The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered the oldest galaxy in the universe ever found. This is GLASS-Z13 that appeared 300 million years after the Big Bang. This information is part of a study conducted by 25 researchers from Harvard University and the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (USA).

“We are probably looking at the farthest starlight anyone has ever seen,” Rohan Naidoo, a researcher at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics, told the news agency. France Press agencyon Wednesday 20, “The telescope broke records, locating a galaxy that existed when the universe was only 300 million years old.”

According to scientists, due to the expansion of the universe, the galaxy should already be 33 billion light-years away from Earth. Before the discovery, the oldest known galaxy was GN-Z11, also found in 2015 by Webb, which appeared 400 million years after the Big Bang, about 15 billion light-years away.

The galaxy was only detected by the infrared light of a telescope, something that cannot be seen with the naked eye. According to the researchers, Webb works like a time machine. The new discovery measures about 1,600 light-years away. The Milky Way, where the Earth is located, has a diameter of 100,000 light-years, that is, it is smaller in size.

James Webb

Webb was sent in December last year, and is located 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, as a result of a partnership between NASA and the European Space Agency. The telescope is the largest ever sent into space, took 30 years to complete and cost about $10 billion to complete.

In all, 20,000 people were involved in developing the technology, from engineers to astronomers. The US agency asserts that the telescope is creating a “new look at distant universes” on other stars, and that it is examining the structure of the universe. Thus, humans can better understand planet Earth.

The telescope is named after James Edwin Webb (1906-1992), a former NASA administrator. Webb led the Apollo mission, responsible for putting the first men on the moon.