NASA’s state-of-the-art observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), has achieved an astounding scientific breakthrough by unveiling what may be the oldest exemplar of the “cosmic web” – a cluster of 10 galaxies that hark back to the early universe.
The cosmic web, a moniker for the enormous interstellar network of gas, dust, and dark matter filaments connecting galaxies, forms the skeletal framework of cosmic architecture. Tracing its origins to minute fluctuations in matter density soon after the Big Bang, the cosmic web developed as gravitational forces pulled matter into clusters over eons.
Situated approximately 13 billion light-years away, the galaxy strand detected by JWST came into being merely 830 million years after the Big Bang. The structure is tethered by a remarkably bright and remote quasar – J0305-3150. Housing an active supermassive black hole at its core, this quasar is among the most radiant entities in the universe, with its light aiding JWST in detecting the dimmer galaxies that surround it.
The groundbreaking discovery was orchestrated by researchers from the ASPIRE project (A Spectroscopic Survey of Biased Halos in the Reionization Era). ASPIRE seeks to explore the role of the earliest black holes in galactic formation and evolution. Utilizing JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), the team observed the quasar and its environs in unparalleled detail.
Xiaohui Fan, an astronomer at the University of Arizona and team member, expressed astonishment at the filament’s lengthy, thin structure, which significantly exceeded their expectations. Fellow team member Feige Wang, an astrophysicist at the University of Arizona and the principal investigator of the ASPIRE program, noted the filamentary structure as one of the earliest associated with a distant quasar.
The researchers anticipate that the filament will eventually coalesce into a massive galaxy cluster, akin to the Coma Cluster observed in the neighboring universe. They also postulate a central role for the quasar in shaping the filament, attracting matter through gravitational pull and expelling gas via its potent radiation and jets.
Joseph Hennawi, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara and research team member, highlighted the progress made in understanding the cosmic web’s formation and evolution over the last two decades. He added that ASPIRE’s mission is to integrate the emergence of the earliest massive black holes into the current narrative of cosmic structure formation.
The discovery of this primordial galaxy strand exemplifies JWST’s capacity to reveal fresh perspectives of the early universe. Launched in December 2021 and achieving its final orbit in January 2022, JWST is designed to observe infrared light stretched by space’s expansion. This feature enables it to detect some of the most distant and ancient cosmic objects, as well as penetrate through dust and gas clouds that obscure other light wavelengths.
The team’s findings were published in two papers in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on June 29, 2023. Further information about JWST and its mission can be obtained from the following sources:
- Wang et al., “A Spectroscopic Survey Of Biased Halos In The Reionization Era: Discovery Of A Proto-cluster At z=7.5 Associated With A Luminous Quasar”
- Fan et al., “A Spectroscopic Survey Of Biased Halos In The Reionization Era: A Long And Narrow Filament Of Galaxies At z=7.5 Associated With A Luminous Quasar”
- NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope official website
- James Webb Space Telescope’s dedicated site
