Astronomers have made a groundbreaking discovery by detecting oxygen in the most distant galaxy ever observed. JADES-GS-z14-0, located 13.4 billion light-years away, is seen as it was just 300 million years after the Big Bang. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), two independent research teams confirmed the presence of oxygen in this ancient galaxy.
The detection suggests that JADES-GS-z14-0 is far more chemically evolved than expected for such a young object. The presence of oxygen implies that stars had already lived and died within this galaxy, producing and dispersing it throughout its structure in just a few hundred million years. This process, known as chemical enrichment, normally takes billions of years.
The discovery was made possible by the synergy between the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and ALMA. The JWST detected the original galaxy, while ALMA provided the crucial oxygen signature through the detection of [OIII] 88μm emission lines. This allowed for a precise redshift measurement with an uncertainty of just 0.005%.
The implications of this discovery are profound, suggesting that galaxy formation and chemical enrichment occurred much faster than expected. This may lead to a rewrite of the timeline of early cosmic evolution. The presence of oxygen in some of the earliest galaxies could also have emerged conditions for planetary formation and potentially even life sooner than previously believed.
This breakthrough showcases the importance of ALMA in unraveling the conditions under which the first galaxies formed, according to ESO astronomer Gergö Popping.
Source: https://dailygalaxy.com/2025/03/scientists-detect-oxygen-oldest-galaxy