Evidence that galaxies that existed 900 million years after the big bang ionized the gas around them (IMAGE)

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Evidence that galaxies that existed 900 million years after the big bang ionized the gas around them

Caption

By analyzing new observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a team led by Simon Lilly of ETH Zürich in Switzerland found evidence that galaxies that existed 900 million years after the big bang ionized the gas around them, causing it to become transparent. They also used Webb to precisely measure the gas around the galaxies, identifying that “bubbles” of ionized gas have a 2 million light-year radius around the tiny galaxies. Over the next hundred million years, the bubbles grew larger and larger, eventually merging and causing the entire universe to become transparent.

Credit

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, Simon Lilly (ETH Zürich), Daichi Kashino (Nagoya University), Jorryt Matthee (ETH Zürich), Christina Eilers (MIT), Rob Simcoe (MIT), Rongmon Bordoloi (NCSU), Ruari Mackenzie (ETH Zürich); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI) Ruari Macken

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