Oxygen was just found in a distant galaxy — and it may provide answers on how ours developed
Scientists have announced the surprising discovery of oxygen and other heavy metals in the most distant known galaxy.
The galaxy, which is known as JADES-GS-z14-0, is 13.4 billion light years away from Earth. It was just found last year using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
"I was really surprised by this clear detection of oxygen in JADES-GS-z14-0,' Gergö Popping, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory's European ALMA Regional Centre who did not take part in the research, said in a statement. 'It suggests galaxies can form more rapidly after the Big Bang than had previously been thought.'
The finding was made in two separate studies conducted by two different teams of astronomers. It has allowed scientists to improve distance measurements to the galaxy.
They used the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array: a group of dozens of radio telescopes in the Chilean desert and the largest astronomical project in existence.
The images show the galaxy as it was when the universe was less than 300 million years old, just about 2 percent of its current age, the researchers noted.
Finding oxygen there tells astronomers that the galaxy is much more chemically mature than expected. Researchers had thought that at its age it was still too young to have galaxies ripe with heavy elements. But it has about 10 times more heavy elements than they had estimated.
Galaxies usually start their lives full of young stars, which are made mostly of lighter elements, including hydrogen and helium. As they evolve, the stars create heavier elements that are sent out through their host galaxy after they die.
'It is like finding an adolescent where you would only expect babies,' said Sander Schouws, the first author of the study now accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. 'The results show the galaxy has formed very rapidly and is also maturing rapidly, adding to a growing body of evidence that the formation of galaxies happens much faster than was expected."
'I was astonished by the unexpected results because they opened a new view on the first phases of galaxy evolution,' said Stefano Carniani of the Scuola Normale Superiore, the lead author of the second paper now accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. 'The evidence that a galaxy is already mature in the infant universe raises questions about when and how galaxies formed.'
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As O'Shaughnessy recalls in the film, she said, 'Oh boy, we're in trouble.' Ride responded, 'We don't have to be. We don't have to do this.' Then they kissed. Ride would ultimately fly twice in space, going aloft the second time in 1984, once again aboard the shuttle Challenger. After that snake-bit ship came to tragic ruin, exploding 73 seconds into its last flight and claiming the lives of all seven crewmembers, Ride and Neil Armstrong, the commander of Apollo 11 and the first man on the moon, served on the commission that investigated the causes of the accident. Ride left NASA in 1987, accepting a fellowship at Stanford and later became a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego. In 1989, O'Shaughnessy moved out west to live with her. It would not be until 2013, a year after Ride's death, that California would permanently legalize gay marriage, and it would not be until 2015 that the Supreme Court would do the same nationwide. That was alright with Ride, who, as with her relationship with her college roommate, continued to believe that her love for O'Shaughnessy should remain a quiet and relatively private thing. But all that began to change in 2011. It was early that year that Ride first showed signs of illness—poor appetite and yellowing cheeks. Her doctor diagnosed pancreatic cancer. 'The doctor never said what stage. He never said the worst stage. We thought she was going to get better, and we were trying everything,' O'Shaughnessy recalls. 'She was doing acupuncture, we were meditating, we became vegans. And then one day, we're at the oncologist, and he said, 'It's time for hospice.' And Sally and I were, like, shocked.' Not long before Ride died, the couple grew concerned that O'Shaughnessy would not be allowed to visit her in the hospital, help make critical care decisions, or share property because they were not married—and could not be in California. So they went for the next best thing, registering as certified domestic partners, which afforded them the necessary rights. 'It's the worst phrase,' says O'Shaughnessy. 'We used to call each other certified domestic hens, because it's such a bad term.' Whatever name they went by, they would not get to enjoy their newly legalized status for long. Ride passed on July 23, 2012, just 17 months after she was diagnosed. At first NASA planned no formal memorial or celebration of Ride's life. Then, the next month, Armstrong died and a memorial was held at the Washington National Cathedral, with 1,500 people in attendance. 'I got mad,' O'Shaughnessy says. She called then-Senator Barbara Mikulski (D, Md.) who chaired the Senate Committee on Appropriations and oversaw NASA's budget. Mikulski called then-NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, who at first offered up a relatively intimate affair for 300 people at the National Air and Space Museum. O'Shaughnessy pressed, and ultimately won approval for a far more prepossessing event at the Kennedy Center in 2013. Today, Ride's legacy lives on in Sally Ride Science, a nonprofit founded by Ride and O'Shaughnessy in 2001 to inspire girls to become scientifically literate and to draw girls and women into the STEM fields. It lives on too in astronaut Peggy Whitson, who now holds the U.S. record for most time spent in space, at 675 days over four missions. It lives on in Christina Koch, who will become the first woman to travel to the moon, when she flies aboard Artemis II on its circumlunar journey in 2026. It lives on in NASA's current 46-person astronaut corps, of whom 19 are women. Ride flew high, Ride flew fast, and Ride flew first—doing service to both science and human equity in the process. Sally powerfully tells her tale.
