The ability to look far into the Universe – and thus further and further back in time – is one of the strengths of the James Webb Space Telescope. Through its use, NASA astronomers have managed to find a filament composed of galaxies existing only 830 million years after the Big Bang.
But what exactly is it about? To begin with, galaxies aren’t randomly scattered across the universe; but they can group themselves in clusters, but also in large interconnected structures called filaments, which form a real “Cosmic Network“.
“I was amazed at how long and narrow this filament was,said research team member Xiaohui Fan.This is one of the oldest filamentary structures we have ever found, connected to a distant quasar,” added Feige Wang, head of the project.
In fact, the main purpose of the project was to search for the oldest quasars in the Universe, in order to find out more about thecosmic environment that hosted the first black holes. So far, the team has observed 8 quasars present within the first billion years of the Big Bang, but in the future they hope to study a total of 25.
Thanks to this important research, astronomers have already made several discoveries, in particular on supermassive black holes that should have existed in such ancient times.
“These unprecedented observations provide clues relevant to the formation of black holes. We learned that the latter were found in huge young galaxies which provided the supply of matter for their accretion,” explained scientist Jinyi Yang.
The JWST was also able to demonstrate the role played by supermassive black holes in the regulate star formation in galaxies; this is because although a black hole can accumulate matter, it is also capable of eject large streams of material. The power of these streams is almost unimaginable, and they are so vast that they affect star formation on a galactic scale.
Finally, we refer you to the spectacular image captured by the Webb telescope, which shows this ancient group of galaxies.