Although you may never have seen him at this stage of his development, every giant was once a baby. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has begun shedding light on the hitherto elusive years of formation in the history of the universe: the formation and merging of galaxies. It is the first time that an archaic cluster of seven galaxies has been confirmed to exist at what astronomers call a redshift of 7.9, or just 650 million years after the Big Bang. Based on the data collected, the astronomers calculated the future evolution of the nascent cluster, finding that it would likely increase in size and mass to resemble the monster of the modern universe, the Hair Cluster.

“This is a very special, unique region of accelerated galaxy evolution, and Webb has given us an unprecedented opportunity to measure the velocities of these seven galaxies and confirm with confidence that they are a primordial cluster,” said Takahiro Morishita of the IPAC-California Institute. technology, lead author of a published study Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Precise measurements by Webb Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) were crucial to confirming the overall distance between galaxies and the high speeds at which they move in the dark matter halo (more than two million miles per hour). . every second).

The spectral data allowed astronomers to model and map the future evolution of the accumulation group up to our time in the modern universe. The prediction that the precluster will eventually resemble the Coma Cluster means it could be one of the densest known galaxies with thousands of members.

“We can see these distant galaxies like little drops of water in different rivers and eventually they will all be part of one big, powerful river,” said Benedetta Vulcani of the National Institute of Astrophysics in Italy. research team. .

Galaxy clusters are the largest concentrations of mass in the known universe that can significantly warp the fabric of space-time. This distortion, called gravitational lensing, can have a magnifying effect on objects outside the cluster, allowing astronomers to peer through the cluster like a giant magnifying glass. The research team was able to exploit this effect by scanning the Pandora cluster to see the first cluster; Even Webb’s powerful tools need nature’s help to see that far.

Studying how large clusters such as Pandora and Coma coalesced for the first time was complicated before Webb due to the expansion of the Universe, which emits light beyond visible wavelengths into the infrared, for which astronomers did not have high-resolution data. Webb’s infrared devices were specifically designed to fill these gaps in the early universe’s history.

The seven galaxies confirmed by Webb were first identified as observational candidates using data from the Hubble Space Telescope’s Boundary Fields program. The program devoted Hubble time to gravitational lensing observations to observe very distant galaxies in detail. But Hubble can see a lot of detail because it can’t detect light beyond the near-infrared range. Webb began his research by focusing on the galaxies discovered by Hubble and collected detailed spectroscopic data in addition to the images.

The research team expects future collaborations between Webb and NASA’s Nancy Grace Rome Space Telescope, a high-resolution, wide-field research mission, to yield even more insights into early galaxy clusters. With 200 times Hubble’s infrared field of view in a single image, Roman will be able to identify more candidate primal cluster galaxies that Webb can check for verification with his spectroscopic tools. Currently, the Rome mission is scheduled to launch by May 2027.

“This is incredible science that we can only dream about now that we have Webb,” said Tommaso Treu of UCLA, a member of the protocluster research team. “With this small first cluster of seven galaxies, at such a great distance, we have a 100 percent spectroscopic confirmation rate, showing future potential for mapping dark matter and filling the timeline of the early evolution of the Universe.”