The James Webb Space Telescope has detected the most distant galaxy known to date — the object MoM-z14, whose light has been traveling to Earth for about 13.5 billion years. We see it as it was just 280 million years after the Big Bang, in the so-called cosmic dawn, when the first stars and galaxies were forming. For comparison: the age of the Universe today is estimated at about 13.8 billion years. So this is the very earliest “childhood” of the cosmos.
Early galaxies turned out to be brighter and more compact than models had predicted. In MoM-z14, a high level of nitrogen was detected, which points to the rapid formation of massive stars. The data also suggest that the galaxy had already partially cleared the surrounding region of neutral hydrogen. For a long time, it was believed that the cosmos was saturated with this element in that era. This calls previous ideas about the state of the Universe at that time into question and requires a revision of existing theories.
We are living in a rare moment in the history of science, when fundamental ideas are changing right before our eyes. A telescope launched just four years ago is already forcing scientists to ask new questions about the origin of structures in the Universe. And a truly exciting chapter lies ahead for cosmology.
