The James Webb Space Telescope appears to have imaged a wormhole swirling in the “Phantom Galaxy”, a location at the center of which scientists believe may contain a black hole. Image by Judy Schmidt/NASA
The James Webb Space Telescope appears to have imaged a wormhole swirling in the “Phantom Galaxy”, a location at the center of which scientists believe may contain a black hole.
“I’ve been doing it for 10 years, and [Webb] The data is new, different and exciting,” Judy Schmidt, who processed the raw data from NASA into a stunning picture of the Phantom Galaxy, told SPACE.com. “Of course I’m going to build something with it.”
The latest images come as the telescope – a $10 billion giant six times more powerful than its predecessor the Hubble Telescope – braves the depths of space in its first series of missions.
Based on the new images, a team of scientists from the University of Manchester now believe that the early universe may have contained galaxies 10 times more similar to ours.
Professor Christopher Conselis, one of the study’s co-authors, told the BBC that the new telescope is able to show scientists the nature of objects that “we knew existed but did not understand how and when they formed”. ”
“We knew that we would see things that Hubble did not see – but in this case we are seeing things differently,” Consellis said.
“We need to understand these processes if we want to understand their origins,” said Conselis, who presented his discovery on Saturday in the United Kingdom. “This may be the most important telescope ever built – at least since Galileo.”
Scientists around the world are puzzled as they sift through the plethora of data coming from the Webb telescope. Two independent teams have recently said that they may have discovered the origin of the universe.
“This is the oldest galaxy we’ve ever seen,” tweeted Paul Byrne, an associate professor of Earth and planetary science at Washington University in St. Louis, who is one of the teams.
“It was seen with the early release [James Webb] data, and has been sufficiently red-shifted to form only 300 million years after the Big Bang – meaning it is 97.8% of the age of the universe.”
The James Webb Telescope has been transmitting images from space since early July. At 21 feet across, its primary mirrors are nearly three times larger than Hubble, which was launched in 1990.
