CECILIA Archives

November 23, 2023November 23, 2023 by Evan Gough

Adolescent Galaxies are Incandescent and Contain Unexpected Elements

Light from 23 distant galaxies, identified with red rectangles in the Hubble Space Telescope image at the top, were combined to capture incredibly faint emission from eight different elements, which are labelled in the JWST spectrum at the bottom. Although scientists regularly find these elements on Earth, astronomers rarely, if ever, observe many of them in distant galaxies, especially nickel. Image Credit: Aaron M. Geller, Northwestern, CIERA + IT-RCDS

If the Universe has adolescent galaxies, they’re the ones that formed about 2 to 3 billion years after the Big Bang. New research based on the James Webb Space Telescope shows that these teenage galaxies are unusually hot. Not only that, but they contain some unexpected chemical elements. The most surprising element found in these galaxies is nickel.