NASA's Webb finds soot in a galaxy 12bn light-years away - and it may hold the ... trends now

NASA's Webb finds soot in a galaxy 12bn light-years away - and it may hold the ... trends now
NASA's Webb finds soot in a galaxy 12bn light-years away - and it may hold the ... trends now

NASA's Webb finds soot in a galaxy 12bn light-years away - and it may hold the ... trends now

Billowing clouds of soot might not be what you expect astronomers to get excited over.

But now researchers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have found that the rings of a distant galaxy are full of cosmic smoke.

Astronomers have discovered complex organic molecules commonly found in smoke and soot in a galaxy more than 12 billion light-years from Earth.

However, far from being a sign of intergalactic pollution, scientists think that this discovery can help us understand how stars formed in the very earliest stages of the universe.

Because this galaxy is so far away, the light coming from its rings has been traveling for billions of years by the time it reaches the JWST.

Researchers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have found that the rings of a distant galaxy are full of cosmic smoke

Researchers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have found that the rings of a distant galaxy are full of cosmic smoke

This allowed scientists to observe the galaxy known as SPT0418-47 as it was when the universe was only 1.5 billion years old - about 10 per cent of its current age.

Normally, using a telescope to study something so extremely distant would not be possible.

Yet, luckily for the researchers, SPT0418-47 is almost perfectly aligned with another, closer galaxy.

Justin Spilker, an astronomer at Texas A&M University, and lead author of the study, explained that this creates a natural 'cosmic magnifying glass' as light from the distant galaxy is bent and stretched by the gravity of the closer body into a ring shape called an 'Einstein Ring.'

The light from this Einstein Ring can be up to 30 times brighter than it would have been otherwise, letting scientists view objects that would normally be too distant and dim to see.

Dr Spilker said that this is what drew him and his team to study this galaxy in the first place, because 'it really lets us see all the rich details of what makes up a galaxy in the early universe that we could never do otherwise.'

Kedar Phadke, who led the technical development of the project, said that thanks to the Webb Telescope, scientists are now able to make discoveries that never would have been possible before.

'Discoveries like this are precisely what Webb was built to do: understand the earliest stages of the universe in new and exciting ways,' Mr Phadke said.

'It's amazing that we can identify molecules billions of light-years away that we're familiar with here on Earth, even if they show up in ways we don't like, like smog and smoke.'

The light from an Einstein Ring can be up to 30 times brighter than it would have been otherwise, letting scientists view objects that would normally be too distant and dim to see

The light from an Einstein Ring can be up to 30 times brighter than it would have been otherwise, letting scientists view objects that would normally be too distant and dim to see

The scientists used the JWST and gravitational lensing to study infrared light emitted

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