Astronomers discover oxygen in the farthest known galaxy.

Astronomers have discovered oxygen in the farthest known galaxy, marking a groundbreaking finding that indicates the galaxy’s chemical composition is much more mature than expected. This discovery has led astronomers to reconsider how quickly galaxies formed in the early universe.

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) announced in a press release on March 20 that two different research teams detected oxygen in the galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0 using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, the most distant galaxy known to date.

JADES-GS-z14-0 was only discovered by astronomers last year. This galaxy is located 13.4 billion light-years away from Earth, meaning its light took 13.4 billion years to reach us from the early universe. What we see now is a snapshot of the galaxy when it was less than 300 million years old, roughly 2% of its actual age.

ALMA’s detection of oxygen in JADES-GS-z14-0 suggests that the galaxy’s chemical composition is more mature than anticipated, according to astronomers.

The two research teams involved include one led by Dutch astronomers, with the research report’s first author being Sander Schouws, a Ph.D. candidate at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Schouws likened the discovery to finding a teenager where one would expect to see a child. “The results indicate that this galaxy formed very quickly and is rapidly maturing. There is increasing evidence showing that galaxies formed much faster than expected, and now we have another piece of that puzzle.”

Galaxies typically start out with young stars primarily composed of light elements like hydrogen and helium. As stars evolve, they produce heavier elements such as oxygen, which are dispersed in their host galaxies after the stars die.

Previously, researchers believed that galaxies rich in heavy elements did not form until the universe reached around 300 million years old. However, these two studies reveal that JADES-GS-z14-0’s heavy element content is about 10 times higher than expected.

Another research team, led by Italian astronomers with Stefano Carniani from Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa as the lead author, published their findings in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Carniani expressed his surprise at these unexpected results, as they open up new perspectives on the early stages of galaxy evolution. Evidence of galaxies already being mature in the early universe raises questions about when and how galaxies formed.

Eleonora Parlanti, a doctoral student at Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa and a co-author of the study, added that ALMA’s observations provide precise measurements of the galaxy’s distance with an uncertainty of only 0.005%, equivalent to an accuracy of within 5 centimeters within a distance of 1 kilometer. This level of precision helps deepen astronomers’ understanding of the characteristics of distant galaxies.

Rychard Bouwens, an associate professor and member of the Leiden Observatory team, noted that while astronomers initially spotted this galaxy using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), it was ALMA that confirmed its existence and accurately determined its remote distance.

Bouwens stated, “This demonstrates the remarkable collaboration between ALMA and JWST, revealing the formation and evolution of the earliest galaxies.”