Astronomers Have Detected a Galaxy Millions of Years Older Than Any Previously Observed

With the help of the James Webb Space Telescope, a team of astronomers has broken the record for the oldest, most distant galaxy detected to date by humans. In a preprint study, still awaiting peer review and publication in a journal, astronomers describe this primitive galaxy, giving it the name MoM z14. According to the researchers’ calculations, this “cosmic miracle” originated 280 million years after the Big Bang, beating the record set by the discovery just last year of JADES-GS-Z14-0, a galaxy created 290 million years after the origin of the universe. To put these measurements in context, the current age of the universe is estimated to be 13.8 billion years. Earth has an approximate age of 4.543 billion years. No one expected the James Webb Space Telescope to have the potential to observe things so close in age to the Big Bang just three and a half years after launch. A brief reminder about distances relative to space-time. Because light travels at a finite speed of 300,000 m ... Read full article.