ok but JWST just found a galaxy that literally should not exist
James Webb telescope just confirmed MoM-z14 , the single most distant galaxy we’ve ever seen. Like, this thing was already doing galaxy things when the universe was ONLY 280 MILLION YEARS OLD. That’s basically yesterday in cosmic time. redshift z=14.44. we’re staring at light that’s been traveling for 13.5 BILLION YEARS.and the worst part??
it’s WAY too bright. like, models said “nah, no way anything this luminous shows up this early” and moM-z14 said hold my nitrogen. it’s got chemical enrichment that should’ve taken hundreds of millions more years. supermassive stars? early explosions? nobody knows!! the early universe is out here breaking every rule we wrote for it look at this thing. tiny blurry reddish-yellow blob in a sea of even tinier galaxies. that little smudge is basically the oldest family photo we have of the cosmos and it’s serving meltdown + science breakdown + more brain-melting pics here before the brain fully evaporates: https://www.jameswebbdiscovery.com/discoveries/james-webb-space-telescope-confirms-mom-z14-farthest-galaxy-ever-seen
Reblog if you too are now emotionally attached to a galaxy that predates earth by like 13 billion years.