A team of astronomers have discovered the most distant galaxy ever observed using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
According to ScienceAlert, the new record smashed two previous records that occurred in April and July of this year.
The newly discovered galaxy is evidence of the early days of the universe, having been created only 235 million years after the Big Bang, a “cosmic eye-blink” in the history of the 13.8 billion-year old cosmos.
Named CEERS-93316, the galaxy would date from before the era when the first stars were born, which is referred to as the Cosmic Dawn. The period commenced 250 million years after the Big Bang when the universe was full of clouds of hydrogen atoms that turned into the first stars.
During the billion years after the Big Bang, everything in the universe began to form, including the matter that turned into stars, galaxies and space dust, with the newly discovered galaxy dating from the relative beginning of that epoch.
Light takes time to travel through space. The further an object is in distant space from the Earth, the further back in the deep past it represents. Light from the early universe poses a particularly challenging problem for scientists, as it is very faint by the time it reaches the Milky Way.
The dim red glow represented by CEERS-93316 may be one of the very first galaxies that popped into existence after the Big Bang, its discoverers theorize, with its beginnings estimated to be around 120 to 220 million years after the Big Bang.