Oxygen detected in most distant galaxy: ‘astonished’ astronomers

AFP | Paris

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Oxygen has been detected in the most distant galaxy ever discovered, surprised astronomers said yesterday, offering further evidence that stars in the early universe matured far quicker than had been thought possible.

The galaxy JADES-GS-z14-0, which was discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope last year, is so far away that its light took 13.4 billion years to reach Earth.

This means the galaxy can also reveal what the universe was like in its infancy, when it was just 300 million years old -- two percent of its current age.

Since coming online in 2022, the powerful Webb telescope has discovered that galaxies in the young universe were much brighter, more advanced and more numerous than scientists had expected.

These discoveries have been so startling they have raised doubts about whether something important is missing in our understanding of the universe.

For the latest research, two international teams led by Dutch and Italian astronomers probed the JADES-GS-z14-0 galaxy using the ALMA radio telescope in Chile’s Atacama desert.

They detected traces of oxygen, according to the European Southern Observatory, confirming hints previously spotted by the Webb telescope.