The NASA telescope reveals the secrets of ancient galaxies that illuminated the universe

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NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope gives astronomers a glimpse of what the early days of the universe looked like: He recently revealed that some of the ancient galaxies in the universe were brighter than expected and resembled glittering lights of Christmas.

In a new study published in Monthly Notices from the Royal Astronomical Society, researchers reported observations of some of the first galaxies to develop in the universe, less than a billion years after the Big Bang, which happened about 13 billion years ago. The data collected for the study show that in some specific wavelengths of infrared light, some of the galaxies are much brighter than predicted by scientists, says a NASA press release. The study, which claims to be the first to confirm this strange occurrence for a large group of galaxies of this period, shows that these are not random cases of luminosity and that even the medium-sized galaxies of this period "illuminated" more the universe. than the galaxies we see today.

Illustration by an artist of one of the first galaxies of the universe. (Photo credit: James Josephides / Swinburne Astronomy Productions)

Scientists have speculated that the excess light from ancient galaxies was a byproduct of galaxies releasing large amounts of ionizing radiation. The study can provide more details on what might have caused the era of reionization, a major cosmic event that allowed the universe to no longer be transparent to starry view. It is unclear when the first stars of the universe appeared, however, evidence suggests that between about 100 million and 200 million years after the Big Bang, the universe was filled with 39, neutral hydrogen that may have begun to combine into stars, which then revived the formation of the first galaxies.

Thanks to the era of reionization, the universe, which was filled with neutral hydrogen, had become ionized hydrogen and featured multiple galaxies. However, astronomers still do not know what could have triggered ionizing radiation to impact all the hydrogen in the universe. "This is one of the biggest outstanding questions in observational cosmology," Stéphane De Barros, lead author of the study and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, said in the press release. "We know it happened, but what is the cause? These new discoveries could be a big clue. "

To observe the time just before the end of the era of reionization, the Spitzer Space Telescope examined two regions of the sky for more than 200 hours each, allowing it to capture light that traveled for more than 13 billion years to reach the Earth.

With the help of these observations, which were part of an observation campaign called GREATS (Spotser), astronomers analyzed 135 distant galaxies and discovered that they were all very bright in two specific wavelengths of infrared light, created by ionizing radiation interacting with the hydrogen and oxygen gases present in each galaxy. These galactic stars could have been dominated by massive young stars containing mostly hydrogen and helium, which could provide more details about the time of reionization and how it has transformed the universe.

"We did not expect Spitzer, with a mirror as big as a Hula-Hoop, to be able to see the galaxies so close to the sun," Michael Werner, scientific lead of the Spitzer project at Jet Propulsion Laboratory's NASA in Pasadena, California, said in the press release. "But nature is full of surprises and the unexpected brightness of these early galaxies, combined with Spitzer's superb performance, puts them within reach of our small but powerful observatory."

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