James Webb Space Telescope

[billy rubin]

Sounds stupid but the definition of what is life is still not clear.

that is not stupid at all.

what is your definition of life? i cant figur e it out.

[zorkan]

Strong AI suggests a new life form is on the way.

"Strong AI would have the cognitive abilities to reason, problem-solve, and learn from experience, mirroring human-like intelligence."

If alien intelligence exists we might detect their AI soon.

[Recusant]

It's full of galaxies! 

"Almost Every Speck of Light in This Incredible Image Is a Galaxy" | Science Alert

The full deep field. You can download the full-size image here.
Image Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, G. Gozaliasl, A. Koekemoer, M. Franco, and the COSMOS-Web team

If you ever want to get a bit of perspective, there's very little that's more humbling than a good deep field image – and JWST has just dropped a real showstopper.

In the latest image release, the powerful space telescope gazed back nearly 12 billion light-years into a tiny patch of sky, less than a fifth of the width of the full Moon. That little patch of sky is teeming with glittering lights.

It looks a lot like any patch of the sky seen when you look up from the ground on a cloudless night, with one major, jaw-dropping difference.

Most of the lights in the new JWST-Hubble composite image are not bright stars, but galaxies, stretching back almost as far across space-time as the beginning of the Universe.

[. . .]

In a catalog compiled from these data [JWST along with the Chandra X-ray Observatory], an international team of astronomers led by astrophysicist Greta Toni of the University of Bologna has identified 1,678 groups of galaxies. Not 1,678 galaxies – 1,678 groups.

There is also nothing special about this little patch of sky, measuring just 6.44 by 6.44 arcminutes. The full Moon, for context, is around 30 arcminutes across. Every other tiny patch of sky should be just as teeming with galaxies, thousands upon thousands that can be imaged in an area smaller than your pinky nail.

[Continues . . .]

There is a preprint PDF of the paper available:

"The COSMOS-Web deep galaxy group catalog up to z=3.7" | arXiv

Abstract:

Galaxy groups with M_tot ≲ 10¹⁴ M_☉ and up to a few tens of members are the most common galaxy environment, marking the transition between field and massive clusters. Identifying groups plays a crucial role in understanding structure formation and galaxy evolution.

Modern deep surveys allow us to build well-characterized samples of groups up to the regime where structures were taking shape. We aimed to build the largest deep catalog of galaxy groups to date over the COSMOS-Web field effective area of 0.45 deg², leveraging the deep high quality data of the new COSMOS-Web photometric catalog resulted from the James Webb Space Telescope observations of the COSMOS-Web field. We performed the group search with the AMICO algorithm, a linear matched filter based on an analytical model for the group signal. AMICO has already been tested in wide and deep field surveys, including COSMOS data up to z = 2.

In this work, we tested the algorithm performances at even higher redshift and searched for protocluster cores at z > 2. We compiled a list of known protoclusters in COSMOS at 2 ≤ z ≤ 3.7, matched them with our detections and studied the clustering of the detected cores.

We estimated purity and completeness of our sample by creating data-driven mocks with the SinFoniA code and linked signal-to-noise to purity. We detected 1678 groups in the COSMOS-Web field up to z = 3.7, including lists of members extending nearly two magnitudes deeper than the previous AMICO-COSMOS catalog. 756 groups were detected with purity of 80\%. More than 500 groups have their redshift confirmed by assigning spectroscopic counterparts. This group catalog offers a unique opportunity to explore galaxy evolution in different environments spanning ~12 Gyr and to study groups, from the least rich population to the formation of the most massive clusters.

[Icarus]

^ Spectacular !

[Recusant]

The paper above is looking at galaxies in the range up to z = 3.7 -- "z" being shorthand for the observed redshift (the larger the number the greater the shift) which in turn gives a rough idea of distance and "age" of the light from those galaxies.

In the paper described below, the redshift is significantly larger, in the range of z = 14. Not as spectacular visually, but amazing in its own way.

"JWST Detects Most Distant Galaxy Yet, 280 Million Years After Big Bang" | Science Alert

The JWST has done it again. The powerful space telescope has already revealed the presence of bright galaxies only several hundred million years after the Big Bang.

Now, it's sensed light from a galaxy only 280 million years after the Big Bang, the most distant galaxy ever detected.

[. . .]

The newly discovered galaxy is named MoM-z14, and it comes from the Mirage or Miracle survey. This spectroscopic survey is designed to confirm high-redshift candidate galaxies, and z14 refers to the galaxy's redshift. This finding is surprising because astronomers expected to find very few galaxies at such a high redshift.

[. . .]

Observations show that most of the galaxy's light comes from stars, not an active galactic nucleus (AGN). AGN are the bright cores of galaxies powered by supermassive black holes accreting matter. So MoM-z14 likely hosts some luminous supermassive stars, something that theory predicted about the early Universe.

The galaxy's nitrogen-to-carbon ratio is higher than that observed in the Sun. Its chemical composition resembles ancient globular clusters attached to the Milky Way. This means that the stars in the galaxy and those in globular clusters formed in similar environments with similar nucleosynthesis and metallicity pollution from previous stars.

"Since this abundance pattern is also common among the most ancient stars born in the Milky Way, we may be directly witnessing the formation of such stars in dense clusters, connecting galaxy evolution across the entire sweep of cosmic time," the authors write.

[Continues . . .]

The paper is open access, but LaTex would be required to present the abstract properly.

"A Cosmic Miracle: A Remarkably Luminous Galaxy at z_spec = 14.4 Confirmed with JWST" | arXiv

[Tank]

It never ceases to amaze.