Scientists are peering into the past and uncovering new clues about the early universe. Since light takes a long time to travel through space, they are now able to see how galaxies looked billions of years ago. The astronomers have discovered that spiral galaxies were more common in the early universe than previously thought. The scientists found that nearly 30% of galaxies have a spiral structure about 2 billion years after the universe formed. The discovery provides a significant update to the universe s origin story as previously told using data from NASA s Hubble Space Telescope.
Clouds of gas in a distant galaxy are being pushed faster and faster at more than 10,000 miles per second out among neighboring stars by blasts of radiation from the supermassive black hole at the galaxy s center. It s a discovery that helps illuminate the way active black holes can continuously shape their galaxies by spurring on or snuffing out the development of new stars.
Using NASA s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA s (European Space Agency s) XMM-Newton, astronomers are exploring whether nearby stars could host habitable exoplanets, based on whether they emit radiation that could destroy potential conditions for life as we know it. This type of research will help guide observations with the next generation of telescopes aiming to take the first images of planets like Earth.
Peering deeply into the cosmos, NASA s James Webb Space Telescope is giving scientists their first detailed glimpse of supernovae from a time when our universe was just a small fraction of its current age. A team using Webb data has identified 10 times more supernovae in the early universe than were previously known. A few of the newfound exploding stars are the most distant examples of their type, including those used to measure the universe s expansion rate.
University of Missouri scientists are peering into the past and uncovering new clues about the early universe. Since light takes a long time to travel through space, they are now able to see how galaxies looked billions of years ago.