Astronomers have made a surprising discovery of oxygen and heavy metals in the farthest known galaxy. It is believed that this galaxy formed in the early days of the universe.

According to the discovery, the galaxy is located 13.4 billion light years away, meaning it was formed in the early days of the universe. Astronomers believe that the universe was created by the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. According to a report by CNN International, the unusually large and bright distant galaxy, named JADES-GS-z14-0, was first observed in January 2024 using the James Webb Space Telescope to observe the universe in infrared light, invisible to the human eye. The space observatory can effectively look back in time to the Cosmic Dawn, a mysterious period marking the beginning of when the first galaxies were born after the initial Big Bang, by observing light that has traveled from space to Earth for billions of years. It took 13.4 billion years for the light from JADES-GS-z14-0 to reach our corner of the universe, allowing telescopes like Webb, ALMA, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile’s Atacama Desert to see the galaxy as it was only 300 million years old. Astronomers were astonished when they used ALMA to follow up Webb’s initial observations and found the presence of oxygen and heavy metals because their existence shows that galaxies formed faster in the early days of the universe than expected.

FASTER THAN EXPECTED
The results of the ALMA findings were published separately in The Astrophysical Journal and Astronomy & Astrophysics journals on Thursday. Sander Schouws, the lead author of The Astrophysical Journal study and a doctoral candidate at Leiden Observatory at Leiden University in the Netherlands, said, “This is a bit like finding a teenager where you expected to find a baby. The results contribute to the increasing evidence that the galaxy formed very rapidly and matured rapidly, showing that galaxy formation happens much faster than expected.”

THE THIRD BRIGHTEST GALAXY
It was proven that JADES-GS-z14-0, including its large size and brightness, had many unexpected aspects. Schouws mentioned in an email that while Webb observed 700 distant galaxies, this galaxy, although the farthest, was the third brightest. However, it is expected that the oldest galaxies would be smaller and fainter because the universe was much smaller back then. Schouws stated in an email, “In general, the galaxies in this early period of the universe are very different from the famous galaxies we know from the beautiful images of the Hubble and JWST. They are much more compact, gas-rich, and disorganized. Conditions are more extreme because a large number of stars are rapidly forming in a small volume.”