Rosa Rubicondior: Refuting Creationism - Looking Into The Past - To 14 Billion Years Before 'Creation Week'

Refuting Creationism

Looking Into The Past
To 14 Billion Years Before 'Creation Week'

F770W–F277W–F115W shown as an RGB false-colour mosaic
at redshift

z = 14.3 2_{- 0.20}^{+ 0.08}

¹¹

Helton, J.M., Rieke, G.H., Alberts, S. et al. (2025)

James Webb Space Telescope reveals unexpected complex chemistry in primordial galaxy | University of Arizona News

It's one thing for creationists to dismiss evidence of life on Earth hundreds of millions, or even a billion or two years before the so-called 'Creation Week' by misrepresenting dating methods and making the absurd claim that the Universe is so finely tuned for life that altering just one parameter slightly would render life impossible, while also claiming that radioactive decay rates were much higher during 'Creation Week', making radiometric dating inaccurate by orders of magnitude.

However, it's quite another to argue that the speed of light was much slower in the past, which would mean that objects appearing to be billions of light-years away are actually much younger than we observe them today.

But a ludicrous and false argument which is not easy to spot by the scientifically illiterate fools that creationists target, was seen by creationists as any reason not to try to get away with it on a different audience.

So, if they don't simply ignore this discovery, it will be interesting to see which lies the creation cult uses to dismiss it. It is the discovery of a galaxy, designated JADES-GS-z14-0) from just 300 million years post Big Bang, discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

This discovery, along with the fact that it is chemically complex, challenges the standard model for galaxy formation as well as the synthesis of 'heavy' elements (i.e., heavier that hydrogen, helium and lithium) because JADES-GS-z14-0 shows evidence of substantial quantities of oxygen. The standard model explains that heavier elements are formed in the end-stages of the life of a sun when its hydrogen supply has all been used up and it collapses under its own gravity. This high gravity forces helium nuclei together to form the heavier elements. When the sun finally explodes in a supernova these elements are thrown into space supplying the next generation os stars with these higher elements.

Space scientists, using the James Webb Space Telescope, have discovered a galaxy, galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0, from about 300 million years post Big Bang. They have detected substantial quantities of oxygen in it. What does the presence of oxygen tell us about the history of this galaxy?

The discovery of oxygen in galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0, which existed around 300 million years after the Big Bang, is significant for several reasons. Oxygen is produced in stars through nuclear fusion, and its presence in a galaxy so early in the universe's history suggests several important things:

Star Formation and Chemical Enrichment: The fact that oxygen is present indicates that stars had already formed and lived long enough to produce heavier elements (also called "metals" in astrophysical terms). These metals are created in the cores of stars and dispersed into space when the stars die (through processes like supernovae or stellar winds). The presence of oxygen suggests that these early stars went through their life cycles, contributing to the chemical enrichment of the galaxy.
Early Stellar Evolution: The galaxy's ability to produce oxygen at such an early stage implies that star formation was occurring rapidly. In the early universe, star formation could have been more intense and quicker than in later epochs, given the different conditions in the early cosmos.
Challenges to Current Models: The detection of oxygen in such an early galaxy challenges existing models of how quickly galaxies and stars could form and evolve in the early universe. It indicates that galaxies could develop a relatively complex chemical composition much sooner than previously thought.
Insight into Galaxy Formation: The oxygen in the galaxy might also shed light on the processes of galaxy formation and evolution. It suggests that JADES-GS-z14-0 could have undergone a series of rapid stellar births, possibly leading to the production of more complex elements over time.
In summary, the presence of oxygen in this early galaxy shows that star formation and chemical enrichment were already well underway just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, offering new insights into the early stages of galaxy formation and the evolution of the universe.

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In other words, galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0 must have been forming stars very soon after the Big Bang, so it was already forming second generation stars, 300 million years post Big Bang.

This discovery, by a team of scientists led by Professor Kevin Hainline of the University of Arizona (UA), is the subject of a paper in the journal Nature Astronomy, and is explained in a UA News release:

James Webb Space Telescope reveals unexpected complex chemistry in primordial galaxy
University of Arizona astronomers have learned more about a surprisingly mature galaxy that existed when the universe was just less than 300 million years old – about 2% of its current age.

Observed by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, the galaxy – designated JADES-GS-z14-0 – is unexpectedly bright and chemically complex for an object from this primordial era, the researchers said. This provides a rare glimpse into the universe's earliest chapter.

Listen to the UA news release

University of Arizona astronomers have learned more about a surprisingly mature galaxy that existed when the universe was just less than 300 million years old – about 2% of its current age.

Observed by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, the galaxy – designated JADES-GS-z14-0 – is unexpectedly bright and chemically complex for an object from this primordial era, the researchers said. This provides a rare glimpse into the universe's earliest chapter.

The findings, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, build upon the researchers' previous discovery, reported in 2024, of JADES-GS-z14-0 as the most distant galaxy ever observed. While this initial discovery established the galaxy's record-breaking distance and unexpected brightness, the new research delves deeper into its chemical composition and evolutionary state.

The work was done as part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey, or JADES, a major James Webb Space Telescope program designed to study distant galaxies.

This wasn't simply stumbling upon something unexpected, said Kevin Hainline, co-author of the new study and an associate research professor at the U of A Steward Observatory. The survey was deliberately designed to find distant galaxies, but this one broke the team's records in ways they didn't anticipate; it was intrinsically bright and had a complex chemical composition that was totally unexpected so early in the universe's history.

It's not just a tiny little nugget. It's bright and fairly extended for the age of the universe when we observed it.

Professor Kevin N. Hainline, co-author
Steward Observatory
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

The fact that we found this galaxy in a tiny region of the sky means that there should be more of these out there. If we looked at the whole sky, which we can't do with JWST, we would eventually find more of these extreme objects.

Jakob Helton, co-author
Steward Observatory
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
The research team used multiple instruments onboard JWST, including the Near Infrared Camera, or NIRCam, whose construction was led by U of A Regents Professor of Astronomy Marcia Rieke. Another instrument on the telescope – the Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI – revealed something extraordinary: significant amounts of oxygen.

Timeline of the universe: Although we are not sure exactly when the first stars began to shine, we know that they must have formed sometime after the era of Recombination, when hydrogen and helium atoms formed (380,000 years after the big bang), and before the oldest-known galaxies existed (400 million years after the big bang). The ultraviolet light emitted by the first stars broke down the neutral hydrogen gas filling the universe into hydrogen ions and free electrons, initiating the era of Reionization and the end of the Dark Ages of the universe.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

In astronomy, anything heavier than helium is considered a "metal," Helton said. Such metals require generations of stars to produce. The early universe contained only hydrogen, helium and trace amounts of lithium. But the discovery of substantial oxygen in the JADES-GS-z14-0 galaxy suggests the galaxy had been forming stars for potentially 100 million years before it was observed.

To make oxygen, the galaxy must have started out very early on, because it would have had to form a generation of stars, said George Rieke, Regents Professor of Astronomy and the study's senior author. Those stars must have evolved and exploded as supernovae to release oxygen into interstellar space, from which new stars would form and evolve.
[To make Oxygen is] a very complicated cycle to get as much oxygen as this galaxy has. So, it is genuinely mind boggling.

George H. Rieke, co-author
Steward Observatory
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
The finding suggests that star formation began even earlier than scientists previously thought, which pushes back the timeline for when the first galaxies could have formed after the Big Bang.

The observation required approximately nine days of telescope time, including 167 hours of NIRCam imaging and 43 hours of MIRI imaging, focused on an incredibly small portion of the sky.

The U of A astronomers were lucky that this galaxy happened to sit in the perfect spot for them to observe with MIRI. If they had pointed the telescope just a fraction of a degree in any direction, they would have missed getting this crucial mid-infrared data, Helton said.

Imagine a grain of sand at the end of your arm. You see how large it is on the sky – that's how large we looked at.

Jakob M. Helton, lead author
Steward Observatory
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
The existence of such a developed galaxy so early in cosmic history serves as a powerful test case for theoretical models of galaxy formation.
Our involvement here is a product of the U of A leading in infrared astronomy since the mid-'60s, when it first started. We had the first major infrared astronomy group over in the Lunar and Planetary lab, with Gerard Kuiper, Frank Low and Harold Johnson.

George H. Rieke, co-author
Steward Observatory
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
As humans gain the ability to directly observe and understand galaxies that existed during the universe's infancy, it may provide crucial insights into how the universe evolved from simple elements to the complex chemistry necessary for life as we know it.
We're in an incredible time in astronomy history. We're able to understand galaxies that are well beyond anything humans have ever found and see them in many different ways and really understand them. That's really magic.

Professor Kevin N. Hainline, co-author
Steward Observatory
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has spectroscopically confirmed numerous galaxies at $z$ > 10. While weak rest-frame ultraviolet emission lines have only been seen in a handful of sources, the stronger rest-frame optical emission lines are highly diagnostic and accessible at mid-infrared wavelengths with the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) of JWST. We report the photometric detection of the distant spectroscopically confirmed galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0 at $z = 14.3 2_{- 0.20}^{+ 0.08}$ with MIRI at 7.7 μm. The most plausible solution for the stellar-population properties is that this galaxy contains half a billion solar masses in stars with a strong burst of star formation in the most recent few million years. For this model, at least one-third of the flux at 7.7 μm originates from the rest-frame optical emission lines Hβ and/or [O iii]λλ4959, 5007. The inferred properties of JADES-GS-z14-0 suggest rapid mass assembly and metal enrichment during the earliest phases of galaxy formation. This work demonstrates the unique power of mid-infrared observations in understanding galaxies at the redshift frontier.

Main
With the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), extragalactic astronomy fundamentally changed. The Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) moved the photometric redshift frontier from $z \approx 10$ to $z \approx 14 - 16$ (see, for example, refs. ^1,2,3,4,5,6), while the Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) pushed the spectroscopic redshift frontier from $z \approx 8$ to $z \approx 12 - 14$ (see, for example, refs. ^7,8,9,10). Crucially, JWST discovered an early period of galaxy formation that was more vigorous than expected, with a sizable population of luminous galaxies and supermassive black holes less than a billion years after the Big Bang.

A companion paper reports the spectroscopic confirmation of JADES-GS-z14-0 at redshift $z = 14.3 2_{- 0.20}^{+ 0.08}$ , which makes it the most distant galaxy with a spectroscopically confirmed redshift¹¹. This galaxy is remarkably luminous, with a rest-frame UV absolute magnitude $M_{U V} \approx - 20.81 \pm 0.16$ , which may require a reassessment of ideas about early galaxy formation, suggesting a slow decline in the number density of galaxies at $z > 12$ , with increasing efficiency of galaxy formation in halos at higher redshifts⁵. The rest-frame UV continuum slope $β_{U V} \approx - 2.20 \pm 0.07$ is relatively red for a very young stellar population, suggesting that the UV emission is affected by a small amount of dust attenuation. The full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) of the intrinsic rest-frame UV light profile is 0.16 ± 0.01 arcsec (corresponding to a deconvolved half-light radius of 260 ± 20 pc). Given its spatial extent, the rest-frame UV emission appears not to be dominated by emission from an active galactic nucleus. The properties of JADES-GS-z14-0 add to the evidence that a population of luminous and massive galaxies was already in place less than 300 Myr after the Big Bang, with number densities more than ten times higher than extrapolations based on pre-JWST observations, as demonstrated in ref. ⁵.

The rest-frame optical nebular emission lines are one of the primary means to characterize the physical conditions in galaxies. However, the redshift of JADES-GS-z14-0 has moved these lines into the wavelength coverage of the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), beyond the wavelength coverage of NIRCam and NIRSpec. The superb performance of JWST12, alongside the remarkable brightness of the most extreme high-redshift galaxies, will allow MIRI to explore the rest-frame optical regime and provide important insights into the nature of the earliest galaxies. MIRI has been used at the redshift frontier with the recent spectroscopic identification of the rest-frame optical emission lines [O iii]λλ4959, 5007 and Hα in the galaxy GHZ2/GLASS-z12 at $z = 12.33 \pm 0.02$ (ref. ¹³). These results highlight the power of combining observations from NIRCam, NIRSpec and MIRI to understand the properties of the very first galaxies.

In this work, we present the robust photometric detection of JADES-GS-z14-0 with MIRI at an observed wavelength of $λ_{o b s} \approx 7.7 μ m$ , corresponding to rest-frame wavelengths of $λ_{r e s t} \approx 4, 400 - 5, 700 \overset{˚}{A}$ . These ultradeep observations with MIRI/F770W provide more information about the nature of this remarkable galaxy, and are among the deepest mid-infrared integrations to date, with an on-source integration time of $t_{o b s} \approx 23.8 h$ for JADES-GS-z14-0.

Unlike creationists, scientists embrace discoveries that challenge existing knowledge, as questioning and reassessing ideas brings us closer to the truth. When previous beliefs are proven wrong, they must be discarded, regardless of their age or how widely accepted they were. In science, no belief is beyond scrutiny; the only thing that matters is the evidence.

This new research debunks the creationist claim that scientists are only allowed to publish findings that align with established dogma.

Furthermore, it counters the creationist assertion that the universe is only a few thousand years old. Just imagine a creationist astronomer trying to publish research like this on platforms like Ken Ham’s website or the Discovery Institute’s outlets.

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