Topic description and stories

JADES-GS-z13-1 in the GOODS-S field

Webb Telescope sees galaxy in mysteriously clearing fog of early Universe

26 Mar 2025

Astronomers have identified a bright hydrogen emission from a galaxy in the very early Universe. ̽»¨Ö±²¥surprise finding is challenging researchers to...

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This image shows the galaxy EGSY8p7, a bright galaxy in the early Universe where light emission is seen from, among other things, excited hydrogen atoms – Lyman-α emission.

Galaxy mergers solve early Universe mystery

18 Jan 2024

A team of astronomers, led by the ̽»¨Ö±²¥ of Cambridge, has used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to reveal, for the first time, what...

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̽»¨Ö±²¥GN-z11 galaxy, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope

Astronomers detect oldest black hole ever observed

17 Jan 2024

Researchers have discovered the oldest black hole ever observed, dating from the dawn of the universe, and found that it is ‘eating’ its host galaxy...

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This infrared image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was taken for the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey, or JADES, programme.

Early universe crackled with bursts of star formation, Webb Telescope shows

06 Jun 2023

Among the most fundamental questions in astronomy is: How did the first stars and galaxies form? ̽»¨Ö±²¥James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a partnership...

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This image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope highlights the region of study by the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES).

Webb telescope reaches new milestone in its search for distant galaxies

09 Dec 2022

New findings confirm that JWST has surpassed the Hubble telescope in its ability to observe the early Universe

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Observations by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have taken advantage of gravitational lensing to reveal the largest sample of the faintest and earliest known galaxies in the universe.

Non-detection of key signal allows astronomers to determine what the first galaxies were – and weren’t – like

28 Nov 2022

Researchers have been able to make some key determinations about the first galaxies to exist, in one of the first astrophysical studies of the period...

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A pin being pushed into a bubble, in which there is an image of the Universe

Can cosmic inflation be ruled out?

03 Nov 2022

Astrophysicists say that cosmic inflation – a point in the Universe’s infancy when space-time expanded exponentially, and what physicists really...

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Variations in the ‘fogginess’ of the universe identify a milestone in cosmic history

16 Apr 2019

Large differences in the ‘fogginess’ of the early universe were caused by islands of cold gas left behind when the universe heated up after the big...

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Stephen Hawking

Taming the multiverse: Stephen Hawking’s final theory about the big bang

02 May 2018

Professor Stephen Hawking’s final theory on the origin of the universe, which he worked on in collaboration with Professor Thomas Hertog from KU...

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Artist's impression of spinning galaxy

Astronomers detect ‘whirlpool’ movement in earliest galaxies

10 Jan 2018

Astronomers have looked back to a time soon after the Big Bang, and have discovered swirling gas in some of the earliest galaxies to have formed in...

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Artist’s impression of the distant galaxy SXDF-NB1006-2

Astronomers observe most distant oxygen ever

16 Jun 2016

An international team of astronomers have detected glowing oxygen in a distant galaxy seen just 700 million years after the Big Bang. This is the...

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An artist's impression of a hypernova, an explosive death of a star roughly ten times more energetic than a normal supernova.

Ancient stars at the centre of the Milky Way contain ‘fingerprints’ from the very early Universe

11 Nov 2015

Astronomers have discovered some of the oldest stars in the galaxy, whose chemical composition and movements could tell us what the Universe was like...

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