#james-webb-space-telescope

#james-webb-space-telescope

Astronomers say NASA's James Webb Space Telescope may have spotted the universe's first "dark stars," primordial bodies of hydrogen and helium that bear almost no resemblance to the nuclear fusion-powered stars we've come to know.

Astronomers were astonished to find an abundance of phosphine, a molecule produced by microbes on Earth, in the atmosphere of a brown dwarf, an unusual type of object that lives in the grey zone between a giant planet and a tiny star. As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Science, astronomers said they had found "undepleted phosphine," a molecule made up of three hydrogen atoms and one phosphorus atom, in the atmosphere of Wolf 1130C, a brown dwarf 54 light-years from Earth.

At the moment, there's no bet­ter way to see any­thing in space than through the lens of the James Webb Space Tele­scope. Pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, that ten-bil­lion-dol­lar suc­ces­sor to the Hub­ble Space Tele­scope can see unprece­dent­ed­ly far out into space, which, in effect, means it can see unprece­dent­ed­ly far back in time: some 13.5 bil­lion years, in fact, to the state of the ear­ly uni­verse.

For more than two years, astronomers have been puzzled by a mysterious discovery from the ancient universe - hundreds of objects known as "little red dots" so far away the light had to travel billions of years to become visible to scientists. First detected by the James Webb Space Telescope, these unusually compact vestiges from the cosmic dawn have sparked intense debate: Are they densely packed galaxies? Or do they contain massive black holes?

To back up his far-fetched theory, Loeb has pointed out that 3I/ATLAS' highly unusual trajectory brings it suspiciously close to Jupiter, Mars, and Venus. In a new blog post, the astronomer pointed out that the object will come within just 1.67 million miles of Mars' path around the Sun, in what he characterized as a "remarkable fine-tuning" of the object's path.

The James Webb Space Telescope's observations reveal nine new light sources at redshift 17 and 25, indicating an active universe just 200 million to 100 million years old.

Everything is unusual about this galaxy. Not only does it look very strange, but it also has this supermassive black hole that's pulling a lot of material in.

Hubble's views are sharper and deeper, gathering types of light invisible to human eyes and blocked by Earth's air, continuing to deliver incredible science.