NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has made a groundbreaking discovery that challenges our understanding of the early universe. The telescope detected bright hydrogen emission from a galaxy in an unexpectedly early time, 330 million years after the Big Bang, when scientists expected the “fog” of neutral hydrogen to have blocked most of the light.
The galaxy, JADES-GS-z13-1, is remarkably clear, showing Lyman-alpha emission that should not have been possible at such an early stage. This finding has significant implications for our understanding of the era of reionization, a period when the universe transitioned from a foggy state to its present form.
The discovery was made using the James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Spectrograph (NIRSpec). The team confirmed that the galaxy is 330 million years old and has an extreme redshift of 13.0, placing it among the oldest galaxies observed so far.
The bright hydrogen emission is a telltale sign of Lyman-alpha radiation, which was expected to be absent at this early stage due to the dense neutral hydrogen fog surrounding the galaxy. This finding suggests that either the galaxy’s light was able to pierce through the fog or there were other factors at play that we do not yet understand.
The source of the Lyman-alpha radiation is still unknown, but theories include the first light from the earliest generation of stars or a powerful active galactic nucleus driven by one of the universe’s first supermassive black holes. Further research is needed to uncover the mystery behind this phenomenon and shed light on the early universe’s foggy past.
Source: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2025/news-2025-116.html