![]() ![]() Over the next hundred million years, these transparent “bubbles” continued to grow larger and larger, eventually merging and causing the entire universe to become transparent. Webb’s data show that these relatively tiny galaxies drove reionization, clearing massive regions of space around them. These regions of transparent gas are gigantic compared to the galaxies – imagine a hot air balloon with a pea suspended inside. “With Webb’s data, we are seeing galaxies reionize the gas around them.” “Not only does Webb clearly show that these transparent regions are found around galaxies, we’ve also measured how large they are,” explained Daichi Kashino of Nagoya University in Japan, the lead author of the team’s first paper. The new results effectively pull back the curtain at the end of this reionization period. Researchers have long sought definitive evidence to explain these transformations. Then, the universe hit “repeat.” The gas again became hot and ionized – likely due to the formation of early stars in galaxies, and over millions of years, became transparent. Over hundreds of millions of years, the gas cooled. After the big bang, gas in the universe was incredibly hot and dense. The results, from a research team led by Simon Lilly of ETH Zürich in Switzerland, are the newest insights about a time period known as the Era of Reionization, when the universe underwent dramatic changes. Why? New data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have pinpointed the reason: The galaxies’ stars emitted enough light to heat and ionize the gas around them, clearing our collective view over hundreds of millions of years. But 1 billion years after the big bang, the gas had become completely transparent. In the early universe, the gas between stars and galaxies was opaque – energetic starlight could not penetrate it. Stars in these galaxies emitted enough light to ionize and heat the gas around them, forming huge, transparent “bubbles.” Eventually, those bubbles met and merged, leading to today’s clear and expansive views. New data from the James Webb Space Telescope recently pinpointed the answer using a set of galaxies that existed when the universe was only 900 million years old. Researchers have long sought definitive evidence to explain this flip. Over the first billion years, the gas became fully transparent – allowing the light to travel freely. Only a few hundred million years after the big bang, the cosmos was brimming with opaque hydrogen gas that trapped light at some wavelengths from stars and galaxies. It’s easy to be wholly unaware of these cave systems – even if you sit in a meadow above them – because the rock between you and the spelunkers prevents light from their headlamps from disturbing the idyllic afternoon.Īpply this vision to the conditions in the early universe, but switch from a focus on rock to gas. ![]() Cave divers equipped with brilliant headlamps often explore cavities in rock less than a mile beneath our feet. ![]()
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