The farthest galaxy reveals how was the early universe - The Mundo.es

was formed when the Universe was only 700 million years, ie when he was a child. It has been called z8_GND_5296 and is the most distant galaxy confirmed so far . An international team of researchers has succeeded thanks to specify their age Keck I telescope 10 meters located in Hawaii, specifically, using its MOSFIRE spectrograph.

Whereas

Big Bang is produced 13.800 million years ago, this galaxy was formed when the Universe was only 5% of the current age. , as explicanesta week in the journal Nature .

finding represents a new step towards finding out what the universe was in its initial stages of training: “The light that [the first galaxies] issued shortly after the Big Bang has been traveling for most of the life of Universe today reaching our telescopes, “explained Rafael Bachiller ELMUNDO.es, director of the National Astronomical Observatory.

The study is led by researchers at the Texas A & M University and Texas Austin, but also involved scientists from other centers in the U.S., Italy and Israel.

Distances

space

The universe is constantly expanding. To calculate distances in space, in addition to the light year (the distance light travels in a year) called astronomers use redshift (redshift ), which is a measure of the speed and distance. The galaxy described in Nature has a redshift of 7.51.

The list

handlers astronomers are including more than 100 galaxies that are candidates to have redshifts greater than 7. Although in the past have been located farthest galaxies of the Milky Way that is described in this study have not been confirmed by spectrograph.

“Now the galaxy called z8_GND_5296 has proved to be bright enough to allow both the accurate measurement of the distance (redshift or ‘redshift’) and the analysis of its weak light through a spectrograph. course for such observations are needed largest telescopes in the world, “said Bachelor, pointing the telescope used (the Keck segmented mirror equipped with a 10 meter effective diameter), is similar in many respects to the Gran Telescopio Canarias.

z8_GND_5296 galaxy formed about 13,000 million years , which is the time it took the light from the galaxy to reach Earth. So, astronomers estimate that the galaxy is about 30,000 million light years from our planet.

“The search for objects that are further away from the Earth of those who already know it is important to improve our understanding of the history of the universe and needed to get to find the first generation of galaxies formed after the Big Bang “, explains Dominik A. Riechers, an astronomer at Cornell University (USA), in an accompanying article in the journal Nature .

Quick

star formation

Astronomers are fascinated with the discovery of this new galaxy, where stars are forming at an astonishing rate, more than a hundred times faster than in our galaxy, the Milky Way. This rate is much higher than in other galaxies have been detected that are at distances roughly comparable “ z8_GND_5296 star has a mass equivalent to about a billion suns and is being observed in bud of star formation. In those ancient times, revealed by these observations, this galaxy formed about 330 suns per year , which is to say that their stellar mass doubling every four billion years. This frenetic pace star formation activity in contrast to the present: for example, currently the Milky Way form two or three solar masses per year, “compared Rafael Bachiller.

“These observations confirm previous ideas that most of the stars we see today were formed in the first billion years after the Big Bang , perhaps even earlier. star formation activity continues today but, compared to that which took place then, can be considered a residual activity. If the task of the universe form stars, we can ensure that made his early work and in largely been fulfilled in that role. Extrapolating into the future the current star formation activity, is that the universe, but hopefully indefinitely, and only 5% higher form of stars that exist today, “says Bachelor .

Another interesting fact provided by this research is that even galaxies as observed in the initial stage of the Universe (when I was about 5% of the current age) and to dust and are enriched with heavy elements (more than hydrogen and helium), which must be produced by a previous generation of stars.

As pointed Dominik A. Riechers, the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scheduled for launch later this decade, will be able to relatively easily detect emissions of heavy elements like carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. Thus, is hopeful that astronomers are able to resolve doubts about the current measurements and find out more about the physical properties under which stars form in these systems.