For the first time in the history of astronomy, researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have witnessed the birth of three of the universe's absolute earliest galaxies, somewhere between 13.3 and 13.4 billion years ago.
Illustration: NASA
Imagine you could look back in time to witness events soon after the Big Bang. How devastating would that be to Ken Ham's strategy of teaching unfortunate children not to enquire how scientists know stuff but to dismiss what they say with the smugly condescending sneer, "Were you there?" as though the only way to know anything is to witness it yourself.
But with the ability to look back in time and actually witness events, and to confirm that those events are exactly as the science predicts based on the normal logical deductions that normal people use - like knowing that your great grandparents had sex, even though no-one witnessed them and they left no record, other than a children born 40 weeks later. According to Ham, there is no way to know that your great grandparents had sex because you weren't there to witness it, so the claim they did has no scientific basis [sic].
So, a child born 40 weeks later could just as well be the result of magic as the result of your great grandparents having sex.
Yep! That's how silly Ham's strategy is and how stupid he has made the willing dupes who use it, sound.
But, to get back to the point of actually looking back in time to witness events 13.4 billion years ago. How is that even possible?
It's possible because of the finite speed of light. When we look deep into space, we aren't seeing events and objects as they are today but as they were when the light reaching our eyes or the detectors on telescopes started out. The further we look into space, the further back in time we are looking, so, when we see objects and events that are 13.4 billion lightyears away, we are seeing them as they were 13.4 billion years ago
And what we see are the first galaxies forming.
So yes, we were there, just as we were there when something happened in the same room. The only difference being the time it took the light to reach our eyes - a few picoseconds or a few billion years. We no less witness an actual event because it took billions of years for information about it to reach us, as we witness an event a few picoseconds ago.
How the scientists at the Cosmic Dawn Center at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute is explained in a University of Copenhagen Faculty of Science news release, and in a paper published today in Science:
THE UNIVERSE Using the James Webb Space Telescope, University of Copenhagen researchers have become the first to see the formation of three of the earliest galaxies in the universe, more than 13 billion years ago. The sensational discovery contributes important knowledge about the universe and is now published in the prestigious journal Science.
For the first time in the history of astronomy, researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have witnessed the birth of three of the universe's absolute earliest galaxies, somewhere between 13.3 and 13.4 billion years ago.
The discovery was made using the James Webb Space Telescope, which brought these first 'live observations' of formative galaxies down to us here on Earth.
Through the telescope, researchers were able to see signals from large amounts of gas that accumulate and accrete onto a mini-galaxy in the process of being built. While this is how galaxies are formed according to theories and computer simulations, it had never actually been witnessed.
Today, the study has been published in the esteemed scientific journal Science.You could say that these are the first 'direct' images of galaxy formation that we’ve ever seen. Whereas the James Webb has previously shown us early galaxies at later stages of evolution, here we witness their very birth, and thus, the construction of the first star systems in the universe.
Assistant Professor Kasper Elm Heintz, lead author
Cosmic Dawn Center, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Niels Bohr Institute,
University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.HOW THEY DID ITGalaxies born shortly after the Big Bang
Researchers were able to measure the formation of the universe’s first galaxies by using sophisticated models of how light from these galaxies was absorbed by the neutral gas located in and around them. This transition is known as the Lyman-alpha transition.
By measuring the light, the researchers were able to distinguish gas from the newly formed galaxies from other gas. These measurements were only possible thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope’s incredibly sensitive infrared spectrograph capabilities.
The researchers estimate the birth of the three galaxies to have occurred roughly 400-600 million years after the Big Bang, the explosion that began it all. While that sounds like a long time, it corresponds to galaxies forming during the first three to four percent of the universe's 13.8-billion-year overall lifetime. Shortly after the Big Bang, the universe was an enormous opaque gas of hydrogen atoms – unlike today, where the night sky is speckled with a blanket of well-defined stars.The birth of galaxies took place at a time in the history of the universe known as the Epoch of Reionization, when the energy and light of some of the first galaxies broke through the mists of hydrogen gas. It is precisely these large amounts of hydrogen gas that the researchers captured using the James Webb Space Telescope’s infrared vision. This is the most distant measurement of the cold, neutral hydrogen gas, which is the building block of the stars and galaxies, discovered by scientific researchers to date.During the few hundred million years after the Big Bang, the first stars formed, before stars and gas began to coalesce into galaxies. This is the process that we see the beginning of in our observations.
Associate Professor Darach Watson., co-author.
Cosmic Dawn Center, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Niels Bohr Institute,
University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.ABOUT THE EARLY UNIVERSEAdds to the understanding of our origins The study was conducted by Kasper Elm Heintz, in close collaboration with, among others, research colleagues Darach Watson, Gabriel Brammer and PhD student Simone Vejlgaard from the Cosmic Dawn Center at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute – a center whose stated goal is to investigate and understand the dawn of the universe. This latest result brings them much closer to doing just that. The research team has already applied for more observation time with the James Webb Space Telescope, with hopes of expanding upon their new result and learning more about the earliest epoch in the formation of galaxies.
The universe began its “life” about 13.8 billion years ago in an enormous explosion – the Big Bang. The event gave rise to an abundance of subatomic particles such as quarks and electrons. These particles aggregated to form protons and neutrons, which later coalesced into atomic nuclei. Roughly 380,000 years after the Big Bang, electrons began to orbit atomic nuclei, and the simplest atoms of the universe gradually formed.
The first stars were formed after a few hundred million years. And within the hearts of these stars, the larger and more complex atoms that we have around us were formed.
Later, stars coalesced into galaxies. The oldest galaxies known to us were formed about 3-400 million years after the Big Bang. Our own solar system came into being about 4.6 billion years ago – more than 9 billion years after the Big Bang.According to the researcher, the new knowledge contributes to answering one of humanity’s most basic questions.For now, this is about mapping our new observations of galaxies being formed in even greater detail than before. At the same time, we are constantly trying to push the limit of how far out into the universe we can see. So, perhaps we’ll reach even further.
says Simone Vejlgaard, co-author.
Cosmic Dawn Center, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Niels Bohr Institute,
University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.One of the most fundamental questions that we humans have always asked is: 'Where do we come from?'. Here, we piece together a bit more of the answer by shedding light on the moment that some of the universe’s first structures were created. It is a process that we’ll investigate further, until hopefully, we are able to fit even more pieces of the puzzle together
Associate Professor Gabriel Brammer, co-author
Cosmic Dawn Center, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Niels Bohr Institute,
University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.The study was conducted by researchers Kasper E. Heintz, Darach Watson, Gabriel Brammer, Simone Vejlgaard, Anne Hutter, Victoria B. Strait, Jorryt Matthee, Pascal A. Oesch, Pall Jakobsson, Nial R. Tanvir, Peter Laursen, Rohan P. Naidu, Charlotte A. Mason, Meghana Killi, Intae Jung, Tiger Yu-Yang Hsiao, Abdurro'uf, Dan Coe, Pablo Arrabal Haro, Steven L. Finkelstein, & Sune Toft.
Editor’s summaryNo wonder frauds like Ken Ham need to be so intellectually dishonest and teach their dupes to be at least as dishonest as they are, when scientists keep producing devastating evidence that the Bible is ludicrously wrong in its description of the creation of a little universe consisting of a small flat planet with a dome over it centred on the Middle East, just a few thousand years ago.
Gas in galaxies provides the raw material for star formation. Galaxies in the early Universe are seen to be forming stars rapidly (see the Perspective by Scarlata), but the amount of gas they contain is difficult to determine observationally. Heintz et al. analyzed near-infrared spectroscopy of 12 galaxies at redshifts greater than eight, equivalent to less than 600 million years after the Big Bang. They identified three galaxies with characteristic rest-frame ultraviolet absorption caused by neutral hydrogen gas located in and around the galaxy. The high column densities of gas are sufficient to sustain the rapid star formation occurring in those galaxies, but only for a short period. —Keith T. Smith
Abstract
Primordial neutral atomic gas, mostly composed of hydrogen, is the raw material for star formation in galaxies. However, there are few direct constraints on the amount of neutral atomic hydrogen (HI) in galaxies at early cosmic times. We analyzed James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) near-infrared spectroscopy of distant galaxies, at redshifts ≳8. From a sample of 12 galaxies, we identified three that show strong damped Lyman-α absorption due to HI in their local surroundings. The galaxies are located at spectroscopic redshifts of 8.8, 10.2, and 11.4, corresponding to 400 to 600 million years after the Big Bang. They have HI column densities ≳1022 cm−2, which is an order of magnitude higher than expected for a fully neutral intergalactic medium, and constitute a gas-rich population of young star-forming galaxies.
Kasper E. Heintz et al.
Strong damped Lyman-α absorption in young star-forming galaxies at redshifts 9 to 11.
Science 384, 890-894 (2024). DOI:10.1126/science.adj0343
© 2024 American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The age of the universe and the forces that produced it are such that the creation of galaxies scientists have now been there and witnessed for the first time, is exactly as science predicted from other strands of evidence than direct observation.
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How did you come to be here, now? This books takes you from the Big Bang to the evolution of modern humans and the history of human cultures, showing that science is an adventure of discovery and a source of limitless wonder, giving us richer and more rewarding appreciation of the phenomenal privilege of merely being alive and able to begin to understand it all.
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Ten Reasons To Lose Faith: And Why You Are Better Off Without It
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Creationists like to point out that the scientists who believe in evolution could not know how old the creation is because the scientists weren't there at the time of creation. To that I respond, "You weren't there either, Mr. Creationist. You don't know either." I think I trust scientists way more than the opinion of these delusional creationists with their literal interpretation of a book which is so vague, so ambiguous, so unclear, so cryptic, and full of more contradictions from Genesis to Revelation, and which has caused centuries of disagreement, division, confusion, aggravation. Are we willing to trust a bunch of ignorant authors from the Bronze Age for what the truth is?
ReplyDeleteThe Bible is so vague and unclear, especially in the creation account and with the Adam and Eve story. In the beginning doesn't tell me how long ago, it doesn't tell me anything. It doesn't mean squat. We also don't know how long each of the 6 creation days were, and we don't know whether of not there was a gap of time between each of the 6 creation days. The Bible doesn't explain itself. We're not going to get any straight information and we're not going to get any straight answers from the Bible. Forget it. Trying to make sense out of the Bible is a futile exercise. That's why there are numerous conflicting, contradictory interpretations and countless different churches and denominations with each one claiming that only they are right and everyone else is wrong and headed to hell. Why can't a so called loving God make Himself clear and answer our questions? Why won't He put an end to this continual confusion, division, and aggravation and tell us what the truth is? Why allow this endless confusion especially if our immortal souls are stake?
Ken Ham, Kent Hovind, and Answers in Genesis are delusional. Answers in Genesis? What a joke. There aren't any answers in Genesis. The Bible doesn't give us any answers, it just gives us more questions and more confusion. These creationists think that by just adding up the human genealogies in Genesis gives us the age of the universe. That's stupid. All these creationists have done is give us the age of the human genealogies, and NOT the age of the universe. This is what happens when the Bible is taken too literally. Creationism is false.