“James Webb” returns to the beginning of the universe and detects a mysterious mass that gives a glimpse into the merging of galaxies
The James Webb Space Telescope has captured what appear to be two "halos" of dark matter in a region where a "knot" of galaxies is forming around a very bright active galactic core that coalesced 11.5 billion years ago.
The telescope obtained an image of the three merging galaxies, which orbit each other at great speeds, which is only possible if there is a large amount of mass.
Astronomers believe the cluster is “two massive dark matter halos merging together.”
And dark matter, although it is believed that it constitutes 80% of the universe, has not yet been directly discovered at all, but the study conducted by the University of Heidelberg in Germany indicates that James Webb “is likely to search in the dense central core of the massive dark matter halo.”
The international team of scientists made this surprising discovery when they were using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to peer into billions of years from the distant past.
This discovery represents an opportunity to observe how early galaxies merged to form the universe as we see it today.
The extremely bright quasar and the extremely red quasar, known as SDSS J165202.64 + 172852.3, are about 11.5 billion years old, and are one of the most powerful quasars ever seen from such a huge distance, according to scientists, who described it as a black hole in the formation stage.
The quasar - the hot gaseous region immediately surrounding a supermassive black hole - reaches several hundred thousand degrees Celsius and emits light and other rays, and is an astronomical radio source.
Previous observations of this region of space, using the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini-North Telescope in Hawaii, have revealed a quasar and hinted at a galaxy in transition. But additional observations with the James Webb Telescope revealed at least three galaxies orbiting the quasar.
This discovery was made possible only by James Webb's ability to look back in time, allowing him to see how the first galaxies formed and evolved.
James Webb's images of the region showed that the three galaxies are moving at an amazing speed, which indicates the presence of a huge mass, which led the team to believe that it may be the most densely formed region of galaxies seen in the early universe, as the quasar that orbits around it was formed only two billion years after its launch. The Big Bang that occurred 13.8 billion years ago.
"Even a dense knot of dark matter is not sufficient to explain this," Dominica Welsalek of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, who led the study, said in a statement. We think we could see an area where two massive dark matter halos are merging together.”
The SDSS quasar J165202.64 + 172852.3 is an "extremely red" quasar when seen at near-infrared wavelengths, performed by the telescope's near-infrared spectrometer (NIRSpec).
The instrument can collect a range of colors, or spectra, across the entire telescope's field of view, rather than just one point at a time, a technique known as integrated field unit (IFU) spectroscopy.
This allowed astronomers to examine the quasar, its galaxy, and the wider surroundings simultaneously.
There are few known galaxy clusters at this early time. They are hard to find, and very few have had time to form since the Big Bang.
According to the scientists, "This may eventually help us understand how galaxies evolve in dense environments... It's an exciting result."
"Our first look at the data quickly revealed clear signs of key interactions between neighboring galaxies," Andre Weiner of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore said in a statement. The sensitivity of the NIRSpec instrument was immediately apparent, and it was clear to me that we were in a new era of infrared spectroscopy.”
suorce :websites