A timeless treasure, surpassing all previous records, has been unearthed by Canadian scientists from the astonishing data archive of the James Webb Space Telescope: a light fossil that was nearly missed.
This is a “ghostly” light not from our present reality, but existing 9 billion years ago, perhaps having long since vanished today. However, James Webb captured it from a world 9 billion light-years away, because it took that long for the light to travel to Earth.
According to Space, this is Sparkler, the galaxy containing the farthest globular clusters ever recorded, identified by a research team from institutes and universities affiliated with the University of Toronto, Canada, through detailed analysis of the remarkable data from NASA/ESA/CSA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
These clusters may contain the first stars of the universe, according to astronomer Lamiya Mowla, a co-author of the study.
The image from James Webb reveals the Sparkler galaxy containing the oldest globular clusters, which may even host the first stars of the universe – (Photo: NASA/ESA/CSA)
According to Science Alert, Sparkler, containing globular clusters dubbed “light fossils”, appeared in the James Webb data so vividly that scientists could observe its twinkling light across a range of wavelengths, allowing them to model and understand its physical properties.
This is highly significant for astronomy, as globular clusters are ancient objects found near the centers of galaxies, acting as satellites that contain stars much older than those in dispersed clusters, some of which are nearly as old as the universe itself.
Globular clusters will reveal to us details about the primordial universe and the formation of the first stars.
A globular cluster observed from a world 9 billion years ago provides a unique “time window” to examine it when it was still relatively “young,” allowing us to understand the “youthful” stages of these ancient stars, or more ambitiously, where they originated and how they formed.
According to astrophysicist Karrtheik Iyer, a co-author, they meticulously studied 12 globular clusters in Sparkler and found that 5 of them lacked the expected oxygen levels consistent with an active star formation phase.
These must be the oldest globular clusters, no longer forming new stars, representing a form of static fossil.
The information above is just preliminary results. Scientists will continue to thoroughly analyze this rare light fossil.
The study has just been published in the scientific journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
