Imagine knowing nothing about your childhood, nothing about where you came from, and spending years hunting for the answers. Then someone hands you a just-discovered trove of photographs of yourself as an infant. You’d finally be able to scrutinize every detail, searching for clues about yourself and how you came to be the way you are.
That’s just what it will be like for astronomers once a long-anticipated, $10 billion telescope finally blasts off into space in the coming days. If all goes well, it will soon show them what the universe looked like as a newborn, nearly 14 billion years ago.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful space telescope ever, is waiting at a launch site in French Guiana. It should be able to detect infrared light from galaxies that are so far away that the light from them has been traveling through space for almost the entire history of the universe.
That means when astronomers detect light from these stars and galaxies, it will be like receiving snapshots in time from the distant past.
“We are trying to build up the story of how the first galaxies ever emerged and how those evolved into galaxies we see today and we live in today,” says Maruša Bradač, an astronomer at the University of California, Davis. “If you don’t get the beginning right, it’s really difficult to figure out what the whole evolution looked like.”
A telescope, or a time machine?
The Milky Way Galaxy is humanity’s home sweet home, but the universe contains hundreds of billions, if not trillions of other galaxies.
“The Andromeda Galaxy is the closest big galaxy to ours. You can even see it with the naked eye, which is kind of cool,” says Bradač. “When you look at that galaxy, you see it as it was 2.2 million years ago.”
That’s because it takes 2.2 million years for light to travel all the way from the Andromeda Galaxy to Earth.
Using telescopes, astronomers have been able to see far more distant galaxies, which means they’ve been able to see farther back into the universe’s history. So far, the most distant galaxy ever discovered, GN-z11, was spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope.
To the untrained eye, it looks like a red blob, but “it’s basically like looking back in time about 13.3, 13.4 billion years ago,” says Charlotte Mason, associate professor at the Cosmic Dawn Center of the Niels Bohr Institute and the University of Copenhagen. “That’s just 300, 400 million years after the Big Bang.”
Hubble is limited in how far back in time it can look, so finding this galaxy was kind of a lucky break. Astronomers only spotted it because decades of using Hubble have let them scour much of the sky, and this particular early galaxy is surprisingly bright.
“It’s potentially more massive or is forming stars much more quickly than most theoretical models would predict,” says Mason. “Already, with that one galaxy, we’ve started to question some of our assumptions about how galaxies evolve.”
The James Webb Space Telescope should be able to provide more information about lots of additional galaxies this old and even older, which will help researchers understand how galaxies formed and changed into the familiar shapes and structures seen today.
“We really need much better samples, we need many more galaxies, and we need to step back in time to see how the galaxies are growing,” says Garth Illingworth, an astronomer with the University of California, Santa Cruz.
The James Webb Space Telescope has technology that should let it see back to 100 million to 200 million years after the Big Bang.
“So really, the period when we think the very first galaxies formed,” says Mason.
This telescope, which took decades to design and build, also has instruments that will let scientists probe the chemical make-up of the galaxies.
Watching the earliest stars in the universe explode
The holy grail for scientists who study the early universe is to find light from the very first galaxy, or the very first stars, says Mason. Those first stars would have formed from the elements created by the Big Bang, mainly helium and hydrogen.
“They set the stage for all of the subsequent galaxy and star formation,” says Mason. “They really fundamentally changed their surroundings.”
The odds of seeing those stars with the James Webb Space Telescope, however, are small. “There’s maybe even more of a chance that we might see one of those stars explode,” says Mason.
Those explosions would have spewed out other chemical elements forged in the earliest stars, setting the universe on a course where carbon, oxygen and other elements ultimately became the building blocks of life.
Illingworth believes that the James Webb Space Telescope won’t be able to see the very first star ever.
“That’s just practically impossible,” he says, adding that even the first little growing galaxies with just a few stars also aren’t likely to be detected.
“But we will go back to the point where we really start to see the galaxies at a very early stage, so that we can trace the whole history, essentially, from then, 200 million years after the Big Bang, through to now,” says Illingworth. “That’s what’s amazing about a telescope like this.”
Humans have long looked up at the skies and tried to make sense of our place in the universe, Mason points out, and the James Webb Space Telescope is the latest step forward in that ancient quest.
“How did we get here? What is the history of our universe that brought us to the point where we can sit here and think about it?” she asks. “To me, that really means starting at the beginning. How did the very first galaxies form in our universe? Because those are really the building blocks of the Milky Way that we live in.”
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
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