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    JWST stellt fest, dass frühe Galaxien das Universum bereits mit schweren Elementen besiedelt haben
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    JWST stellt fest, dass frühe Galaxien das Universum bereits mit schweren Elementen besiedelt haben

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    1. UniversityofArizona on

      When the universe was still in its infancy – only 500 million years after the Big Bang or about 3% of its current age – some of the universe’s earliest stars and galaxies had already formed. Astronomers have long predicted that much of the gas surrounding these young galaxies must have remained rather pristine, composed of mostly hydrogen and helium, the primordial ingredients available in the newborn cosmos.

      According to a [study](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-026-02988-2) published by astronomers at the University of Arizona in Nature Astronomy, this picture likely is not correct. Instead, galaxies were already seeding the cosmos with heavy elements, such as oxygen and carbon, much earlier than astronomers expected.

    2. kinetic_honda on

      Just a thought? Is it possible that the early cosmos were a lot more crowded when compared to right now, hence making it such that stars smashed more frequently, hence forming these heavier elements earlier, relatively speaking?

      Edit: just looked into this – turns out it could be because the early cosmos was „cleaner“ with only hydrogen and helium. Stars could get much bigger than what is possible now (need to understand why though)

    3. eric23456 on

      Why is this unexpected? [1] says that it takes a large star ~10m years to fuse all the hydrogen up to iron at which point it novas and makes heavier stuff. [2] says that it takes ~10k years for the larger stars to form. So it seems like 500m years would be way more than enough time to have done a bunch of cycles and have a lot of heavier stuff floating around.

      [1] https://phys.org/news/2015-04-quickly-supernova.html

      [2] https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/astronomy-and-astrophysics/star-formation/

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