Dutch and American scientists have found the oldest galaxy ever possible. They saw light emitted more than 13 billion years ago and only now reaching the earth. To illustrate: light puts every second a distance of about 300,000 kilometers. The discovery was announced Tuesday
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The system has been named EGS zs8-1. Because it was still young, creates a lot of new stars. The pace is about eighty times as high as in our galaxy.
At the time of EGS zs8-1 the universe was only 650 million years old. There are also previously found a few of those early galaxies. The researchers call that “pieces of the puzzle how the first galaxies emerged.”
In the period from EGS zs8-1 the universe underwent a crucial change. Hydrogen, the most abundant element, got another ‘fingerprint’. This allowed the universe to develop into what we see today everywhere.
By studying these ancient systems, so scientists can understand how the universe is put together now. But the more astronomers look back, the more difficult it becomes. Shortly after the big bang, the universe was in fact an opaque cloud that blocked out light. These are called the “dark ages”.
The research gets a boost as a few years a new space telescope is launched, the James Webb. Who can look back further in history than its predecessors, such as the Hubble and Spitzer, used in Dutch-US study
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