The newly discovered galaxy, named JADES-GS-z7-01-QU, existed about 700 million years after the big bang, until something made star formation suddenly stop.
Astronomers have spotted the oldest “dead” galaxy ever observed while studying the cosmos with the James Webb Space Telescope, and it’s one of the deepest views into the distant universe made with the observatory to date. The galaxy existed when the universe was only about 700 million years into its current age of about 13.8 billion years.
“We’re not sure if any of those scenarios can explain what we’ve now seen with Webb,” said study coauthor Roberto Maiolino, professor of experimental astrophysics at the Cavendish Laboratory and the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge, in a statement. “Until now, to understand the early universe, we’ve used models based on the modern universe.
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Astronomers find monster black hole devouring a sun's-worth of matter every dayBen Turner is a U.K. based staff writer at Live Science. He covers physics and astronomy, among other topics like tech and climate change. He graduated from University College London with a degree in particle physics before training as a journalist.
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