Astronomers have made an exciting discovery with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). They detected traces of oxygen in a distant galaxy named JADES-GS-z14-0, which is located about 13.4 billion light-years from Earth. This light traveled through space when the universe was less than 300 million years old. It’s remarkable because many scientists believed that heavy elements like oxygen didn’t exist at such an early time.
Dr. Sander Schouws from Leiden Observatory, who led one of the research teams, stated that this finding changes our understanding of galaxy formation. The first stars in the universe created heavier elements and released them when they exploded. Oxygen is important because it’s detectable over vast distances and can give clues about the universe’s early years.
Finding oxygen in JADES-GS-z14-0 suggests that at least two generations of stars lived and died there. This discovery challenges old models that said it would take hundreds of millions of years for oxygen to form in galaxies.
ALMA’s precise measurements confirmed the oxygen signal, allowing researchers to determine the galaxy’s distance with astonishing accuracy. They found that this galaxy has a lower dust-to-star mass ratio than expected, hinting at a metallicity around one-fifth of that found in our Sun. The motion of ionized gas at high speeds indicates a massive amount of dark matter, which is a key component in galaxy formation.
Dr. Stefano Carniani from the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa emphasized how surprising these results are. They indicate that JADES-GS-z14-0 has more metals than we would expect for its age, suggesting faster star formation or better mixing of materials from supernovae. Follow-up observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) further support these findings and provide hints about how early reionization may have occurred.
Traditional models of galaxy growth assume a slow and gradual process. This discovery compresses that timeline, meaning galaxies could have matured much quicker than we thought. Researchers are now considering whether massive bursts of star formation were common in early galaxies.
For the future, astronomers plan to use JWST to find more elements and ALMA to search for dust emissions from other ancient galaxies. This collaborative effort could reveal whether JADES-GS-z14-0 is an outlier or part of a larger pattern of rapid galaxy evolution.
Overall, new data suggests that the universe evolved much faster than previously thought. The journey from the Big Bang to the first stars might have occurred in a flash, reshaping cosmic history.
This study has been published in The Astrophysical Journal. For an in-depth look, you can check it out here.
