Creationism in Crisis - Witnessing Events Even Further Back In Time

JADES-GS-z14-0

JWST (NASA)

The distant galaxy (circled) sits next to, but far behind, another galaxy

Earliest, most distant galaxy discovered with James Webb Space Telescope | University of Cambridge

Hot on the heels of the news that scientists had witnessed the birth of a galaxy some 13.4 billion years ago, or shortly after the Big Bang, comes news of the discovery of an even earlier galaxy being witnessed through the medium of the James Webb Space Telescope looking deeper into space and so further back in time.

Readers may remember how I described witnessing an event billions of years ago, information about which took 13.4 billion years to reach us, is no less witnessing an event than is witnessing an event a few picoseconds ago in the same room; the only difference being the time that information of the event took to reached our eyes, or in the case of a space telescope, the on-board detectors.

Now scientists have seen a galaxy that existed a mere 290 million years after the Big Bang, and about 3.5 billion years before creationists believe the Universe was created as a small flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East, because some primitive pastoralists from the ignorant and fearful infancy of our species made up a creation myth to fill the cavernous gaps in their knowledge and understanding of the world.

The discovery was made by an international group of scientists which included Dr Francesco D’Eugenio of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, UK. The significance of the discovery, which is reported in Cornell University's arXiv preprint server, is explained in a Cambridge University Research news release:

The two earliest and most distant galaxies yet confirmed, dating back to only 300 million years after the Big Bang, have been discovered using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of astronomers today announced.

Found in a region near the Hubble Ultra Deep Field by the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) team, these galaxies mark a major milestone in the study of the early Universe.

These galaxies join a small but growing population of galaxies from the first half billion years of cosmic history where we can really probe the stellar populations and the distinctive patterns of chemical elements within them.

Dr Francesco D’Eugenio Kavli Institute for Cosmology
University of Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, UK.

Because of the expansion of the Universe, the light from distant galaxies stretches to longer wavelength as it travels, an effect known as redshift. In these galaxies, the effect is extreme, stretching by a factor of 15, and moving even the ultraviolet light of the galaxies to infrared wavelengths where only JWST has the capability to see it. Modern theory holds that galaxies develop in special regions where gravity has concentrated the cosmic gas and dark matter into dense lumps known as ‘halos’. These halos evolved quickly in the early Universe, rapidly merging into more and more massive collections of matter. This fast development is why astronomers are so eager to find yet earlier galaxies: each small increment moves our eyes to a less developed period, where luminous galaxies are even more distinctive and unusual. The two newly discovered galaxies have been confirmed spectroscopically. In keeping with the collaboration’s standard naming practice, the galaxies are now known as JADES-GS-z14-0 and JADES-GS-z14-1, the former being the more distant of the two. In addition to being the new distance record holder, JADES-GS-z14-0 is remarkable for how big and bright it is. JWST measures the galaxy at over 1,600 light-years in diameter. Many of the most luminous galaxies produce the bulk of their light via gas falling into a supermassive black hole, producing a quasar, but at this size JADES-GS-z14-0 cannot be this. Instead, the researchers believe the light is being produced by young stars. The combination of the high luminosity and the stellar origin makes JADES-GS-z14-0 the most distinctive evidence yet found for the rapid formation of large, massive galaxies in the early Universe. This trend runs counter to the pre-JWST expectations of theories of galaxy formation. Evidence for surprisingly vigorous early galaxies appeared even in the first JWST images and has been mounting in the first two years of the mission.

JADES-GS-z14-0 now becomes the archetype of this phenomenon. It is stunning that the Universe can make such a galaxy in only 300 million years.

Dr Stefano Carniani, lead author
Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy.

Despite its luminosity, JADES-GS-z14-0 was a puzzle for the JADES team when they first spotted it over a year ago, as it appears close enough on the sky to a foreground galaxy that the team couldn’t be sure that the two weren’t neighbours. But in October 2023, the JADES team conducted even deeper imaging—five full days with the JWST Near-Infrared Camera on just one field—to form the “JADES Origins Field.” With the use of filters designed to better isolate the earliest galaxies, confidence grew that JADES-GS-z14-0 was indeed very distant.

We just couldn’t see any plausible way to explain this galaxy as being merely a neighbour of the more nearby galaxy.

Professor Kevin Hainline, co-author
University of Arizona, AR, USA.

Fortunately, the galaxy happened to fall in a region where the team had conducted ultra-deep imaging with the JWST Mid-Infrared Instrument. The galaxy was bright enough to be detected in 7.7 micron light, with a higher intensity than extrapolation from lower wavelengths would predict.

We are seeing extra emission from hydrogen and possibly even oxygen atoms, as is common in star-forming galaxies, but here shifted out to an unprecedented wavelength.

Jakob Helton, co-author
University of Arizona, AR, USA.

These combined imaging results convinced the team to include the galaxy in what was planned to be the capstone observation of JADES, a 75-hour campaign to conduct spectroscopy on faint early galaxies. The spectroscopy confirmed their hopes that JADES-GS-z14-0 was indeed a record-breaking galaxy and that the fainter candidate, JADES-GS-z14-1, was nearly as far away. Beyond the confirmation of distance, the spectroscopy allows further insight into the properties of the two galaxies. Being comparatively bright, JADES-GS-z14-0 will permit detailed study.

We could have detected this galaxy even if it were 10 times fainter, which means that we could see other examples yet earlier in the Universe—probably into the first 200 million years. The early Universe has so much more to offer.

Professor Brant Robertson, co-author
Professor of astronomy and astrophysics
University of California-Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA.

Abstract
The discovery by JWST of an abundance of luminous galaxies in the very early Universe suggests that galaxies developed rapidly, in apparent tension with many standard models. However, most of these galaxies lack spectroscopic confirmation, so their distances and properties are uncertain. We present JADES JWST/NIRSpec spectroscopic confirmation of two luminous galaxies at redshifts of \( z = 14.32^{+0.08}_{-0.20} \) and \( z = 13.90 \pm 0.17 \). The spectra reveal ultraviolet continua with prominent Lyman-\(\alpha\) breaks but no detected emission lines. This discovery proves that luminous galaxies were already in place 300 million years after the Big Bang and are more common than what was expected before JWST. The most distant of the two galaxies is unexpectedly luminous ( \( M_{\rm uv} = -20.81 \pm 0.16 \) ) and is spatially resolved with a radius of 260 parsecs. Considering also the steep ultraviolet slope of the second galaxy ( \( \beta = -2.71 \pm 0.19 \) ), we conclude that both are dominated by stellar continuum emission, showing that the excess of luminous galaxies in the early Universe cannot be entirely explained by accretion onto black holes. Galaxy formation models will need to address the existence of such large and luminous galaxies so early in cosmic history.

Stefano Carniani, Kevin Hainline, Francesco D'Eugenio, et al.(2024)
A shining cosmic dawn: spectroscopic confirmation of two luminous galaxies at \( z\sim14\)
arXiv 2405.18485[astro-ph.GA]

© 2024 Cornell University.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Amazingly, by remaining willfully ignorant, getting their 'science' from the pulpit on Sundays and lacking the courage and personal integrity to question it, there are still grown adults, mostly in the USA, who believe the stars are small lights, stuck to a dome over a flat Earth that the Bible calls a 'firmament', and so are all a few thousand years old and are all the same distance away from Earth.

These people feel entitled to political power over others, the right to legislate for other people and have their infantile superstitions and fairy tales taught to school children as real science, at tax-payers' expense.

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