Revealing the "parallel world" of the Milky Way 13.2 billion years ago

(NLDO) - Firefly Sparkle, which has just appeared in the universe just 600 million years after the Big Bang, is a "newborn" copy of the Milky Way.

According to Sci-News, data from the James Webb Space Telescope has just recorded an object that can reflect the portrait of the Milky Way galaxy containing Earth when it first began to form.

Nicknamed Firefly Sparkle, the galaxy existed in space just 600 million years after the Big Bang that created the universe.

This means that the image James Webb captured of it is an image from 13.2 billion years ago, because the light from Firefly Sparkle took billions of years to reach Earth.

"Copy of the early Milky Way" Firefly Sparkle and two smaller friends - Photo: NASA/ESA/CSA

Dr. Lamiya Mowla from Wellesley College (USA), a member of the multinational research team on Firefly Sparkle, said that finding it was an amazing event.

James Webb couldn't see as far and as clearly as the ancient galaxy's actual location 13.2 billion years ago. But a gravitational lens helped.

A gravitational lens is a foreground object or cluster of objects whose gravitational field is so strong that it bends space-time, and lies between the line of sight from Earth and the object being observed.

In this observation, the giant foreground galaxy cluster MACS J1423.8+2404 acts as a gravitational lens, acting as a powerful magnifying glass suspended in front of James Webb's eye, allowing Firefly Sparkle to appear clearly.

In addition, Firefly Sparkle is a rare galaxy. Not only does it clearly show each component and is extremely ancient, it also has a mass equivalent to the early Milky Way, which scientists have previously calculated.

Firefly Sparkle's mass is concentrated in 10 star clusters, with a total mass of about 10 million times that of the Sun.

This makes Firefly Sparkle one of the lowest-mass galaxies resolved into clusters of stars observed at a time when the universe was just a few hundred million years old.

In addition, astronomers also observed two neighboring galaxies, which they named Firefly-Best Friend and Firefly-New Best Friend, located 6,000 and 40,000 light-years away from Firefly Sparkle, respectively, smaller than the size of the Milky Way today.

They appear to be moving towards a merger with Firefly Sparkle.

"It has long been predicted that galaxies in the early universe formed through successive interactions and mergers with smaller galaxies. We may be witnessing this process," said co-author Yoshihisa Asada of Kyoto University in Japan.

In other words, observing Firefly Sparkle is like looking into a "parallel world " of the Milky Way, but a version from the past, when it was still a newborn.

So through it, scientists can learn more about the formation of the very place where Earth belongs.

The findings were recently published in the scientific journal Nature.

Source: https://nld.com.vn/lo-dien-the-gioi-song-song-132-ti-nam-truoc-cua-ngan-ha-196241222103210768.htm