New Webb telescope photo truly boggles the mind

[Judi Lynn]

Ancient collisions.
By Mark Kaufman on May 22, 2024



A deep view of the universe teeming with galaxies. Credit: ESA / Webb / NASA / CSA / J. Dunlop / D. Magee / P. G. Pérez-González / H. Übler / R. Maiolino, et. al

Everywhere you look are galaxies.

The powerful James Webb Space Telescope recently captured a new deep field view of the universe, which is a look into some of the farthest reaches of space. In the image below, the hundreds of objects you can see (except for the six-pointed stars in the foreground) are galaxies among the black ether of the cosmos, each teeming with stars and planets. Many are spirals, like our Milky Way galaxy. The deepest ones appear red, as the expanding universe has stretched their light into longer wavelengths of red light.

This view, which looks back at galaxies billions of years ago — because it takes that long for such old light to reach us — reveals two galaxies and the black holes at their centers merging just some 740 million years after the Big Bang created our universe. The universe is now 13.7 billion years old.

Specialized instruments aboard the Webb telescope called spectrographs — which separate different types of light into different color spectrums, similar to a prism — revealed dense gases rapidly spinning in the galaxies, which helped identify the black holes. (Black holes, wielding extreme gravities, pull matter around them in blazing-hot disks of matter, called accretion disks.)

Astronomers have found that early black holes are extremely massive, which is unexpected because they're so young. But new evidence from Webb, like these new views, show the great mergers occurred long ago.

"Our findings suggest that merging is an important route through which black holes can rapidly grow, even at cosmic dawn," Hannah Übler, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge who led the research, said in a statement. "Together with other Webb findings of active, massive black holes in the distant Universe, our results also show that massive black holes have been shaping the evolution of galaxies from the very beginning."



Except for the six-pointed stars in the foreground, everything in this James Webb Space Telescope image is a galaxy. Credit: ESA / Webb / NASA / CSA / J. Dunlop / D. Magee / P. G. Pérez-González / H. Übler / R. Maiolino, et. al

More:
https://mashable.com/article/james-webb-space-telescope-galaxies-black-holes

[MiHale]

1. It's so obvious that we are the only planet with life...

Why do we even pose the query?

That is an absolutely awe-inspiring photo.

Thanks Judi

[Shermann]

3. We'll probably never know if there is (or was) life in these galaxies

These deep field photos show galaxies that are so far away that by now have crossed over the cosmic event horizon. As long as the universe keeps expanding, they will be causally disconnected from us. We can only catch faint glimpses of what once was, long ago. Eventually the light will catch up and they will wink out.

[MiHale]

4. Don't need hard science for this...

The odds are great that the universe is teeming with life. If it happened once it will happen again. We just think we’re special.

[GreenWave]

5. They used to think there was only one galaxy.

I suspect the same will happen with the cosmos.

[Shermann]

8. Teeming? Universe, maybe. Visible universe, maybe not.

An infinite universe, if it exists, creates some awkward possibilities when it comes to abiogenesis. The Cosmos doesn't care if we have friends outside of our solar system to play with and seems to be much better at making rocks than sentient beings. In fact, the Cosmos seems to want to kill us.

[GiqueCee]

15. Try counting...

... the number of galaxies in just that wee patch of space. Now tile together a complete sphere in which we stand. Still counting? Of course you are. And that's just the galaxies, each of which contains a gazillion stars, give or take a squillion.
It is statistically impossible for there NOT to be other life forms out there, a great many of which may well look upon us as quaintly archaic, and more than a little dangerous. Hell, I look on us as quaintly archaic, and more than a little dangerous.

[brer cat]

2. Awesome!

[Kid Berwyn]

6. "massive black holes have been shaping the evolution of galaxies from the very beginning."

So. What else is new?

[Easterncedar]

7. Mind duly boggled, thanks!

[erronis]

9. No wonder some peoples' god needed to rest after 6 days!

Of course that particular god may have days composed of millions of years --- or billionths of a second. Who knows except the bibble?

[Permanut]

10. What's the next thing beyond "boggled"?

We have trouble wrapping our minds around the very big and the very small.

Thanks Judi Lynn, I think we should call you "Professor Judi Lynn". Seriously.

[Sky Jewels]

11. And this is one reason religion is so silly.

People want to imagine that our little planet is the focus of some sky wizard’s attention.

It is not.

Reality is far more awe-inspiring than nonsensical human-made mythology.

[Shermann]

16. Yeah, the Book of Genesis sort of sells the creation short. nt

[jaxexpat]

12. Has anybody looked at this through a microscope?

It looks kinda like a J. Pollock piece.




Okay, , already.

[Richard D]

13. "Space . . .

. . . is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

[Fritz Walter]

14. Eureka! You've uncovered the Total Perspective Vortex

‘For when you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little marker, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says “You are here.”’
Douglas Adams, The Restaurant At The End of the Universe, 1980

Source: Wikipedia

That tiny little marker doesn't appear on screen because we're standing next to the Vortex machine.

[Richard D]

18. Excellent! (nt)

[Hekate]

17. Reading this brings me a kind of quiet joy. The multiverse is more marvellous than we can ever know...

Reading this brings me a kind of quiet joy. The multiverse is more marvellous than we can ever know, and every new revelation expands our hearts and minds.

I don’t know why people feel the need to fight “religion” in these instances — but when they do they reveal they know only a tiny slice of the philosophies and practices called religion.

Thousands of years ago the Hindus wrote their own stories of the cosmos, of many worlds coming into being and passing away and forming again over countless ages.

Pantheists think sacredness abides in the whole world — there is no “sky daddy” to fight, and why would you?

Neopagans reach back for words and concepts to make sense of the world as we experience it, and bring back the names of old gods and goddesses. Nearly all of them are self-aware of what they are co-creating, and live grounded in this century.

Everywhere I look I see beliefs in the divine by many names, and only a few, a very few, would feel in any way threatened by this wonderful scientific window into creation.

For myself — a kind of quiet joy that fills my heart. Life goes on in endless song.