The unexpected appearance of the “monster” PJ308-21 in the James Webb data has upended long-standing cosmological theories.
The brilliant light from PJ308-21, a “monster” quasar, has “traveled back in time” from a region of the universe less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang, the event that marked the birth of the universe 13.8 billion years ago.
One billion years post-Big Bang is a period known as the “Cosmic Dawn,” where ancient cosmological theories posited a monotonous space filled with small galaxies and black holes, newly formed from chaos.
However, the timeline has been disrupted by PJ308-21, which is 2 billion times heavier than the Sun.
Illustration of a quasar with 2 small galaxies about to merge with its galaxy – (Image AI: ANH THƯ).
A quasar is actually a disguised black hole. It is in the process of voraciously consuming material, making it shine like a star in the sky.
The images captured by the world’s most powerful space telescope, James Webb, of PJ308-21 are not of the present, as the light takes time to travel to Earth.
In this case, James Webb has looked back billions of years to capture the pristine image of this object as it existed in the past, in its former state and position.
In the moment captured by the telescope, this quasar is continuing to grow due to a merger with the galaxy that contains it and 2 satellite galaxies.
Image of the ancient quasar in James Webb data – (Image: NASA).
The merger of the 2 galaxies could provide the monster black hole – this quasar – with a vast amount of gas and dust, facilitating the growth of the black hole and continuing to power PJ308-21.
Even more surprisingly, both the quasar and the 2 galaxies merging with the galaxy hosting the quasar are already at a high level of evolution, something that should only have occurred billions of years later, not while the universe was still “newborn.”
According to Dr. Roberto Decarli from the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy (INAF), the lead author, these objects are still undergoing extremely efficient and chaotic growth due to the rich galactic environment in which they formed.
PJ308-21 is metal-rich, while the surrounding gas and dust are undergoing “photoionization” – a process where photon particles provide energy that electrons need to escape from atoms, creating charged ions.
One of the galaxies merging with the main galaxy PJ308-21 is also metal-rich, and its material is partially being ionized by electromagnetic radiation from the quasar.
The photoionization process is also occurring in the second satellite galaxy, but it is being driven by a rapid star formation event.
All of the above observations – along with similar evidence of galaxies or black holes that are much larger than expected during the first billion years of the universe – provide clear evidence that humanity may need to rewrite the history of the Cosmic Dawn.
It may not have been a primitive world as once believed – where objects could have evolved much faster than they do today. And the universe may not have expanded in a steady manner, but rather in a tangled and complex way similar to how life on Earth has evolved.
