ST/ Astronomers discover newborn galaxies with the James Webb Space Telescope

Paradigm

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Paradigm

35 min readSep 29, 2023

Space biweekly vol.85, 14th September — 29th September

TL;DR

With the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers are now able to peer so far back in time that we are approaching the epoch where we think that the first galaxies were created. Throughout most of the history of the Universe, galaxies seemingly tend to follow a tight relation between how many stars they have formed, and how many heavy elements they have formed. But for the first time we now see signs that this relation between the amount of stars and elements does not hold for the earliest galaxies. The reason is likely that these galaxies simply are in the process of being created, and have not yet had the time to create the heavy elements.
While previous researchers have hypothesized that black holes eat slowly, new simulations indicate that black holes scarf food much faster than conventional understanding suggests. Some quasars brighten and disappear within months — a time scale that aligns with the new findings.
A team recently calculated that most of the Moon’s permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) are at most around 3.4 billion years old and can contain relatively young deposits of water ice. Water resources are considered key for sustainable exploration of the Moon and beyond, but these findings suggest that current estimates for cold-trapped ices are too high.
Astronomers using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have identified carbon dioxide in a specific region on the icy surface of Europa.
At the center of every galaxy is a supermassive black hole. Beyond a certain size, these become active, emitting huge amounts of radiation, and are then called quasars. It is thought these are activated by the presence of massive dark matter halos (DMH) surrounding the galaxy, directing matter towards the center, feeding the black hole. A team has now surveyed hundreds of ancient quasars and found this behavior is very consistent throughout history. This is surprising, as many large-scale processes show variation throughout the life of the universe, so the mechanism of quasar activation could have implications for the evolution of the entire universe.
Discovery of two potential Polar Ring galaxies suggests these stunning rare clusters might be more common than previously believed.
An international research team has used the James Webb Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array to observe the most distant galaxy protocluster to date, 13.14 billion light-years away. The team has successfully captured the “core region” of the galaxy protocluster, which corresponds to a metropolitan area with a particularly high number density of galaxies.
Lab-based studies reveal how carbon atoms diffuse on the surface of interstellar ice grains to form complex organic compounds, crucial to reveal the chemical complexity in the universe.
A new study finds an engineered compound given to mice aboard the International Space Station (ISS) largely prevented the bone loss associated with time spent in space.
One of the most interesting and important questions in cosmology is, ‘How much matter exists in the universe?’ An international team has now succeeded in measuring the total amount of matter for the second time. The team determined that matter makes up 31% of the total amount of matter and energy in the universe, with the remainder consisting of dark energy.
And more!

Space industry in numbers

The global smart space market size is projected to grow from USD 9.4 billion in 2020 to USD 15.3 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 10.2% during the forecast period. The increasing venture capital funding and growing investments in smart space technology to drive market growth.

Analysts at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have predicted that economic activity in space will become a multi-trillion-dollar market in the coming decades. Morgan Stanley’s Space Team estimates that the roughly USD 350 billion global space industry could surge to over USD 1 trillion by 2040.

Source: Satellite Industry Association, Morgan Stanley Research, Thomson Reuters. *2040 estimates

Space industry news

Latest research

Dilution of chemical enrichment in galaxies 600 Myr after the Big Bang

by Kasper E. Heintz, Gabriel B. Brammer, Clara Giménez-Arteaga, Victoria B. Strait, Claudia del P. Lagos, Aswin P. Vijayan, Jorryt Matthee, Darach Watson, Charlotte A. Mason, Anne Hutter, Sune Toft, Johan P. U. Fynbo, Pascal A. Oesch in Nature Astronomy

With the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers are now able to peer so far back in time that we are approaching the epoch where we think that the first galaxies were created. Throughout most of the history of the Universe, galaxies seemingly tend to follow a tight relation between how many stars they have formed, and how many heavy elements they have formed. But for the first time we now see signs that this relation between the amount of stars and elements does not hold for the earliest galaxies. The reason is likely that these galaxies simply are in the process of being created, and have not yet had the time to create the heavy elements.

The Universe is teeming with galaxies — immense collections of stars and gas — and as we peer deep into the cosmos, we see them near and far. Because the light has spent more time reaching us, the farther away a galaxy is, we are essentially looking back through time, allowing us to construct a visual narrative of their evolution throughout the history of the Universe.

Observations have shown us that galaxies through the last 12 billion years — that is, 5/6 of the age of the Universe — have been living their life in a form of equilibrium: There appears to be a fundamental, tight relation between on one hand how many stars they have formed, and on the other hand how many heavy elements they have formed. In this context, “heavy elements,” means everything heavier than hydrogen and helium. This relation makes sense, because the Universe consisted originally only of these two lightest elements. All heavier elements, such as carbon, oxygen, and iron, was created later by the stars.

A look through time with the James Webb Space Telescope. The big galaxy in the foreground is named LEDA 2046648, and is seen just over a billion years back in time, while most of the others lie even farther away, and hence are seen even further back in time. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Martel.

The very first galaxies should therefore be “unpolluted” by heavy elements. But until recently we haven’t been able to look so far back in time. In addition to being far away, the reason is that the longer light travels through space, the redder it becomes. For the most distant galaxies you have to look all the way into the infrared part of the spectrum, and only with the launch of James Webb did we have a telescope big and sensitive enough to see so far. And the space telescope did not disappoint: Several has James Webb broken its own record for the most distant galaxy, and now it finally seems that we are reaching the epoch where some of the very first galaxies were created.

In a new study, published today in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy, af team of astronomers from the Danish research center Cosmic Dawn Center at the Niels Bohr Institute and DTU Space in Copenhagen, has discovered what seems indeed to be some of the very first galaxies which are still in the process of being formed.

“Until recently it has been near-impossible to study how the first galaxies are formed in the early Universe, since we simply haven’t had the adequate instrumentation. This has now changed completely with the launch of James Webb,” says Kasper Elm Heintz, leader of the study and assistant professor at the Cosmic Dawn Center.

The relationship between the total stellar mass of the galaxy and the amount of heavy elements is a bit more complex than that. How fast the galaxy produces new stars also has something to say. But if you correct for that, you get a beautiful, linear relationship: The more massive the galaxy, the more heavy elements. But this relation is now being challenged by the latest observations.

“When we analyzed the light from 16 of these first galaxies, we saw that they had significantly less heavy elements, compared to what you’d expect from their stellar masses and the amount of new stars they produced,” says Kasper Elm Heintz.

This plot shows the observed galaxies in an “element-stellar mass diagram”: The farther to the right a galaxy is, the more massive it is, and the farther up, the more heavy elements it contains. The gray icons represent galaxies in the present-day Universe, while the red show the new observations of early galaxies. These ones clearly have much less heavy elements than later galaxies, but agree roughly with theoretical predictions, indicated by the blue band. Credit: Kasper Elm Heintz, Peter Laursen.

In fact the galaxies turned out to have, on average, four times less amounts of heavy elements that in the later Universe. These results are in stark contrast to the current model where galaxies evolve in a form of equilibrium throughout most of the history of the Universe.

The result is not entirely surprising though. Theoretical models of galaxy formation, based on detailed computer programs, do predict something similar. But now we’ve seen it! The explanation, as proposed by the autors in the article, is simply that we are witnessing galaxies in the process of being created. Gravity has gathered the first clumps of gas, which have begun to form stars. If the galaxies then lived their lives undisturbed, the stars would quickly enrich them with heavy elements. But in between the galaxies at that time were large amounts of fresh, unpolluted gas, streaming down to the galaxies faster than the stars can keep up.

“The result gives us the first insight into the earliest stages of galaxy formation which appear to be more intimately connected with the gas in between the galaxies than we thought.
This is one of the first James Webb observations on this topic, so we’re still waiting to see what the larger, more comprehensive observations that are currently being carried out can tell us. There is no doubt that we will shortly have a much clearer understanding of how galaxies and the first structures began their formation during the first billion years after the Big Bang,” Kasper Elm Heintz concludes.

Nozzle Shocks, Disk Tearing, and Streamers Drive Rapid Accretion in 3D GRMHD Simulations of Warped Thin Disks

by Nicholas Kaaz, Matthew T. P. Liska, Jonatan Jacquemin-Ide, Zachary L. Andalman, Gibwa Musoke, Alexander Tchekhovskoy, Oliver Porth in The Astrophysical Journal

A new Northwestern University-led study is changing the way astrophysicists understand the eating habits of supermassive black holes.

While previous researchers have hypothesized that black holes eat slowly, new simulations indicate that black holes scarf food much faster than conventional understanding suggests.

According to new high-resolution 3D simulations, spinning black holes twist up the surrounding space-time, ultimately ripping apart the violent whirlpool of gas (or accretion disk) that encircles and feeds them. This results in the disk tearing into inner and outer subdisks. Black holes first devour the inner ring. Then, debris from the outer subdisk spills inward to refill the gap left behind by the wholly consumed inner ring, and the eating process repeats. One cycle of the endlessly repeating eat-refill-eat process takes mere months — a shockingly fast timescale compared to the hundreds of years that researchers previously proposed. This new finding could help explain the dramatic behavior of some of the brightest objects in the night sky, including quasars, which abruptly flare up and then vanish without explanation.

“Classical accretion disk theory predicts that the disk evolves slowly,” said Northwestern’s Nick Kaaz, who led the study. “But some quasars — which result from black holes eating gas from their accretion disks — appear to drastically change over time scales of months to years. This variation is so drastic. It looks like the inner part of the disk — where most of the light comes from — gets destroyed and then replenished. Classical accretion disk theory cannot explain this drastic variation. But the phenomena we see in our simulations potentially could explain this. The quick brightening and dimming are consistent with the inner regions of the disk being destroyed.”

Kaaz is a graduate student in astronomy at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and member of the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA). Kaaz is advised by paper co-author Alexander Tchekhovskoy, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at Weinberg and a CIERA member.

The LT torques induced by the rotation of the central BH cause the accretion disk to warp and, sometimes, tear into discrete subdisks.

Accretion disks surrounding black holes are physically complicated objects, making them incredibly difficult to model. Conventional theory has struggled to explain why these disks shine so brightly and then abruptly dim — sometimes to the point of disappearing completely. Previous researchers have mistakenly assumed that accretion disks are relatively orderly. In these models, gas and particles swirl around the black hole — in the same plane as the black hole and in the same direction of the black hole’s spin. Then, over a time scale of hundreds to hundreds of thousands of years, gas particles gradually spiral into the black hole to feed it.

“For decades, people made a very big assumption that accretion disks were aligned with the black hole’s rotation,” Kaaz said. “But the gas that feeds these black holes doesn’t necessarily know which way the black hole is rotating, so why would they automatically be aligned? Changing the alignment drastically changes the picture.”

The researchers’ simulation, which is one of the highest-resolution simulations of accretion disks to date, indicates that the regions surrounding the black hole are much messier and more turbulent places than previously thought.

Using Summit, one of the world’s largest supercomputers located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the researchers carried out a 3D general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD) simulation of a thin, tilted accretion disk. While previous simulations were not powerful enough to include all the necessary physics needed to construct a realistic black hole, the Northwestern-led model includes gas dynamics, magnetic fields and general relativity to assemble a more complete picture.

“Black holes are extreme general relativistic objects that affect space-time around them,” Kaaz said. “So, when they rotate, they drag the space around them like a giant carousel and force it to rotate as well — a phenomenon called ‘frame-dragging.’ This creates a really strong effect close to the black hole that becomes increasingly weaker farther away.”

Frame-dragging makes the entire disk wobble in circles, similar to how a gyroscope precesses. But the inner disk wants to wobble much more rapidly than the outer parts. This mismatch of forces causes the entire disk to warp, causing gas from different parts of the disk to collide. The collisions create bright shocks that violently drive material closer and closer to the black hole. As the warping becomes more severe, the innermost region of the accretion disk continues to wobble faster and faster until it breaks apart from the rest of the disk. Then, according to the new simulations, the subdisks start evolving independently from one another. Instead of smoothly moving together like a flat plate surrounding the black hole, the subdisks independently wobble at different speeds and angles like the wheels in a gyroscope.

“When the inner disk tears off, it will precess independently,” Kaaz said. “It precesses faster because it’s closer to the black hole and because it’s small, so it’s easier to move.”

According to the new simulation, the tearing region — where the inner and outer subdisks disconnect — is where the feeding frenzy truly begins. While friction tries to keep the disk together, the twisting of space-time by the spinning black hole wants to rip it apart.

“There is competition between the rotation of the black hole and the friction and pressure inside the disk,” Kaaz said. “The tearing region is where the black hole wins. The inner and outer disks collide into each other. The outer disk shaves off layers of the inner disk, pushing it inwards.”

Now the subdisks intersect at different angles. The outer disk pours material on top of the inner disk. This extra mass also pushes the inner disk toward the black hole, where it is devoured. Then, the black hole’s own gravity pulls gas from the outer region toward the now-empty inner region to refill it.

Kaaz said these fast cycles of eat-refill-eat potentially explain so-called “changing-look” quasars. Quasars are extremely luminous objects that emit 1,000 times more energy than the entire Milky Way’s 200 billion to 400 billion stars. Changing-look quasars are even more extreme. They appear to turn on and off over the duration of months — a tiny amount of time for a typical quasar. Although classical theory has posed assumptions for how quickly accretion disks evolve and change brightness, observations of changing-look quasars indicate that they actually evolve much, much faster.

“The inner region of an accretion disk, where most of the brightness comes from, can totally disappear — really quickly over months,” Kaaz said. “We basically see it go away entirely. The system stops being bright. Then, it brightens again and the process repeats. Conventional theory doesn’t have any way to explain why it disappears in the first place, and it doesn’t explain how it refills so quickly.”

Not only do the new simulations potentially explain quasars, they also could answer ongoing questions about the mysterious nature of black holes.

“How gas gets to a black hole to feed it is the central question in accretion-disk physics,” Kaaz said. “If you know how that happens, it will tell you how long the disk lasts, how bright it is and what the light should look like when we observe it with telescopes.”

Past extent of lunar permanently shadowed areas

by Norbert Schörghofer, Raluca Rufu in Science Advances

A team including Southwest Research Institute’s Dr. Raluca Rufu recently calculated that most of the Moon’s permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) are at most around 3.4 billion years old and can contain relatively young deposits of water ice. Water resources are considered key for sustainable exploration of the Moon and beyond, but these findings suggest that current estimates for cold-trapped ices are too high.

The current tilt of the Moon’s spin axis combined with its orbital inclination — the angle to Earth’s orbital plane — and the Sun’s low angle creates permanent shadows at its poles. PSRs are some of the coldest spots in the solar system, allowing them to trap volatile chemicals, including water ice, that would immediately transform directly from a solid to a gas in the harsh, airless sunshine that falls in most other places on the Moon.

“We think the Earth-Moon system formed following a giant impact between early Earth and another protoplanet,” said Rufu, a Sagan Fellow who is the second author of a Science Advances paper. “The Moon formed from the impact-generated debris disk, migrating away from Earth over time. Around 4.1 billion years ago the Moon experienced a major spin axis reorientation when its tilt reached high angles before it damped down to the configuration we see today. As the axial tilt decreased, PSRs appeared at the poles and grew over time.”

Evolution of Moon distance and axis orientation.

The team used AstroGeo22, a new Earth-Moon evolution simulation tool, to calculate the Moon’s axial tilt over time. Together with surface height measurements from the Lunar Orbital Altimeter Laser data (LOLA), the team estimated the evolution of the shadowed areas over time.

“The time evolution of the Moon-Earth distance remained an unsolved problem for half a century,” Rufu said. “However, these new geological proxies for the history of the Earth-Moon system allow us to calculate the Moon’s axial tilt and the extent of PSRs over time.”

In 2009, NASA crashed the two-ton Atlas Centaur rocket body, part of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), near the south pole of the Moon. It struck the floor of Cabeus crater, creating a plume of debris examined for the presence of water and other chemicals in the lunar regolith. A shepherding satellite travelling four minutes behind the Centaur and several Earth-orbiting satellites, including the Hubble Space Telescope, monitored the impact.

“Our work suggests that Cabeus crater became a PSR less than a billion years ago. The various volatiles detected in the plume created by LCROSS indicate that ice-trapping continued into relatively recent times,” said Norbert Schörghofer, the lead author of this paper from the Planetary Science Institute. “Impacts and outgassing are potential sources of water but peaked early in lunar history, when the present-day PSRs did not yet exist. The age of PSRs largely determines the amount of water ice that could be trapped in the lunar polar regions. Information about the abundance of water ice in PSRs is particularly important in planning for upcoming crewed and uncrewed missions to the Moon searching for water.”

Endogenous CO 2 ice mixture on the surface of Europa and no detection of plume activity

by G. L. Villanueva, H. B. Hammel, S. N. Milam, S. Faggi, V. Kofman, L. Roth, K. P. Hand, L. Paganini, J. Stansberry, J. Spencer, S. Protopapa, G. Strazzulla, G. Cruz-Mermy, C. R. Glein, R. Cartwright, G. Liuzzi in Science

Jupiter’s moon Europa is one of a handful of worlds in our solar system that could potentially harbor conditions suitable for life. Previous research has shown that beneath its water-ice crust lies a salty ocean of liquid water with a rocky seafloor. However, planetary scientists had not confirmed if that ocean contained the chemicals needed for life, particularly carbon.

Astronomers using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have identified carbon dioxide in a specific region on the icy surface of Europa. Analysis indicates that this carbon likely originated in the subsurface ocean and was not delivered by meteorites or other external sources. Moreover, it was deposited on a geologically recent timescale. This discovery has important implications for the potential habitability of Europa’s ocean.

“On Earth, life likes chemical diversity — the more diversity, the better. We’re carbon-based life. Understanding the chemistry of Europa’s ocean will help us determine whether it’s hostile to life as we know it, or if it might be a good place for life,” said Geronimo Villanueva of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, lead author of one of two independent papers describing the findings.
“We now think that we have observational evidence that the carbon we see on Europa’s surface came from the ocean. That’s not a trivial thing. Carbon is a biologically essential element,” added Samantha Trumbo of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, lead author of the second paper analyzing these data.

NASA plans to launch its Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will perform dozens of close flybys of Europa to further investigate whether it could have conditions suitable for life, in October 2024.

Webb finds that on Europa’s surface, carbon dioxide is most abundant in a region called Tara Regio — a geologically young area of generally resurfaced terrain known as “chaos terrain.” The surface ice has been disrupted, and there likely has been an exchange of material between the subsurface ocean and the icy surface.

This graphic shows a map of Europa’s surface with NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in the first panel and compositional maps derived from Webb’s NIRSpec/IFU (Near Infrared Spectrograph’s Integral Field Unit) data in the following three panels. In the compositional maps, the white pixels correspond to carbon dioxide in the large-scale region of disrupted chaos terrain known as Tara Regio (center and right), with additional concentrations within portions of the chaos region Powys Regio (left). The second and third panels show evidence of crystalline carbon dioxide, while the fourth panel indicates a complexed and amorphous form of carbon dioxide. Credits: Science Credit: Geronimo Villanueva (NASA/GSFC), Samantha Trumbo (Cornell Univ.), NASA, ESA, CSA. Image Processing Credit: Geronimo Villanueva (NASA/GSFC), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

“Previous observations from the Hubble Space Telescope show evidence for ocean-derived salt in Tara Regio,” explained Trumbo. “Now we’re seeing that carbon dioxide is heavily concentrated there as well. We think this implies that the carbon probably has its ultimate origin in the internal ocean.”
“Scientists are debating how much Europa’s ocean connects to its surface. I think that question has been a big driver of Europa exploration,” said Villanueva. “This suggests that we may be able to learn some basic things about the ocean’s composition even before we drill through the ice to get the full picture.”

Both teams identified the carbon dioxide using data from the integral field unit of Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec). This instrument mode provides spectra with a resolution of 200 x 200 miles (320 x 320 kilometers) on the surface of Europa, which has a diameter of 1,944 miles, allowing astronomers to determine where specific chemicals are located. Carbon dioxide isn’t stable on Europa’s surface. Therefore, the scientists say it’s likely that it was supplied on a geologically recent timescale — a conclusion bolstered by its concentration in a region of young terrain.

“These observations only took a few minutes of the observatory’s time,” said Heidi Hammel of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, a Webb interdisciplinary scientist leading Webb’s Cycle 1 Guaranteed Time Observations of the solar system. “Even with this short period of time, we were able to do really big science. This work gives a first hint of all the amazing solar system science we’ll be able to do with Webb.”

Villanueva’s team also looked for evidence of a plume of water vapor erupting from Europa’s surface. Researchers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope reported tentative detections of plumes in 2013, 2016, and 2017. However, finding definitive proof has been difficult. The new Webb data shows no evidence of plume activity, which allowed Villanueva’s team to set a strict upper limit on the rate of material potentially being ejected. The team stressed, however, that their non-detection does not rule out a plume.

“There is always a possibility that these plumes are variable and that you can only see them at certain times. All we can say with 100% confidence is that we did not detect a plume at Europa when we made these observations with Webb,” said Hammel.

Subaru High-z Exploration of Low-luminosity Quasars (SHELLQs). XVIII. The Dark Matter Halo Mass of Quasars at z ∼ 6

by Junya Arita, Nobunari Kashikawa, Yoshiki Matsuoka, Wanqiu He, Kei Ito, Yongming Liang, Rikako Ishimoto, Takehiro Yoshioka, Yoshihiro Takeda, Kazushi Iwasawa, Masafusa Onoue, Yoshiki Toba, Masatoshi Imanishi in The Astrophysical Journal

At the center of every galaxy is a supermassive black hole. Beyond a certain size, these become active, emitting huge amounts of radiation, and are then called quasars. It is thought these are activated by the presence of massive dark matter halos (DMH) surrounding the galaxy, directing matter towards the center, feeding the black hole. A team including researchers from the University of Tokyo have, for the first time, surveyed hundreds of ancient quasars and found this behavior is very consistent throughout history. This is surprising, as many large-scale processes show variation throughout the life of the universe, so the mechanism of quasar activation could have implications for the evolution of the entire universe.

Measuring the mass of DMHs is not easy; it’s famously a very elusive substance, if substance is even the right word to use, given the actual nature of dark matter is unknown. We only know it exists at all due to its gravitational impact on large structures such as galaxies. Thus, dark matter can only be measured by making observations about its gravitational effects on things. This includes the way it might pull on something or affect its movement, or through the lensing (bending of light) of objects behind a suspected area of dark matter.

The challenge becomes greater at large distances, given how weak the light from more distant, and therefore ancient, phenomena can be. But this did not stop Professor Nobunari Kashikawa from the Department of Astronomy, and his team, from trying to answer a long-standing question in astronomy: How are black holes born, and how do they grow? The researchers are especially keen to explore this in relation to supermassive black holes, the largest kind, which exist in the heart of every galaxy. These would be very difficult to study were it not for the fact that some grow so massive they begin to output incredibly powerful jets of matter or spheres of radiation that in either case become what we call quasars. These are so powerful that even at large distances, we can now observe them using modern techniques.

Comparison of M1450, the absolute magnitudes at 1450 Å of SHELLQs quasars (red circles) and those of known quasars. We refer to the M1450 from the quasar sample in Jiang et al. (2016; black triangle) and that of newly identified quasars in Bañados et al.

“We measured for the first time the typical mass for dark matter halos surrounding an active black hole in the universe about 13 billion years ago,” said Kashikawa. “We find the DMH mass of quasars is pretty constant at about 10 trillion times the mass of our sun. Such measurements have been made for more recent DMH around quasars, and those measurements are strikingly similar to what we see for more ancient quasars. This is interesting because it suggests there is a characteristic DMH mass which seems to activate a quasar, regardless of whether it happened billions of years ago or right now.”

Quasars at great distances appear faint, as the light which left them long ago has spread out, was absorbed by intervening matter, and has been stretched into nearly invisible infrared wavelengths due to the universe expanding over time. So Kashikawa and his team, whose project began in 2016, used multiple surveys of the sky which incorporated a range of different instruments, the main one being Japan’s Subaru Telescope, located in U.S. state of Hawaii.

“Upgrades allowed Subaru to see farther than ever, but we can learn more by expanding observation projects internationally,” said Kashikawa. “The U.S.-based Vera C. Rubin Observatory and even the space-based Euclid satellite, launched by the EU this year, will scan a larger area of the sky and find more DMH around quasars. We can build a more complete picture of the relationship between galaxies and supermassive black holes. That might help inform our theories about how black holes form and grow.”

WALLABY pilot survey: the potential polar ring galaxies NGC 4632 and NGC 6156

by N Deg, R Palleske, K Spekkens, J Wang, et al in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

A group of international astronomers, including researchers from Queen’s University, has identified two potential polar ring galaxies, according to results published.

Queen’s researchers Nathan Deg and Kristine Spekkens (Physics, Engineering Physics & Astronomy) led the analysis of data obtained using a telescope owned and operated by CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency. Looking at sky maps of hydrogen gas in over 600 galaxies as part of CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope’s WALLABY survey, they identified two potential polar ring galaxies, a type of galaxy that exhibits a ring of stars and gas perpendicular to its main spiral disk.

Although this is not the first time that astronomers have observed polar ring galaxies, they are the first observed using the ASKAP telescope located at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, CSIRO’s Murchison radio astronomy observatory on Wajarri Yamaji Country in Western Australia. These new detections in gas alone suggest polar ring galaxies might be more common than previously believed.

Further investigation of polar ring structures can help us better understand how galaxies evolve. For example, one of the main hypotheses to explain the origin of polar rings is a merger where a larger galaxy ‘swallows’ a smaller one. If polar ring galaxies are more common than previously thought, this could mean that these mergers are more frequent.

In the future, polar ring galaxies can also be used to deepen our understanding of the universe, with potential applications in dark matter research. It is possible to use polar rings to probe the shape of dark matter of the host galaxy, which could lead to new clues about the mysterious properties of the elusive substance.

Jayanne English, a member of the WALLABY research team and also an expert in astronomy image-making at the University of Manitoba, developed the first images of these gaseous polar ring galaxies using a combination of optical and radio data from the different telescopes. First, optical and infrared data from the Subaru telescope in Hawaii provided the image for the spiral disk of the galaxy. Then, the gaseous ring was added based on data obtained from the WALLABY survey, an international project using CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope to detect atomic hydrogen emission from about half a million galaxies.

The creation of this and other astronomical images are all composite because they include information that our eyes can’t capture. In this particular case, the cold hydrogen gas component, invisible to the human eye, is seen in radio “light” using CSIRO’s ASKAP. The subtle colour gradient of this ring represents the orbital motions of the gas, with purple-ish tints at the bottom tracing gas that moves towards the viewer while the top portion moves away. The emission from the ring was separated from the radio emission emanating from the disk of the galaxy using virtual reality tools, in collaboration with Professor Tom Jarrett (University of Cape Town, South Africa).

Over 25 global collaborators from Canada, Australia, South Africa, Ecuador, Burkina Faso, Germany, China, and beyond worked together to analyze the data from the first public data release of the WALLABY survey, resulting in the newly published paper. The next step for the team is to confirm the polar ring galaxies finding through additional observations using different telescopes, including the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa.

“Polar ring galaxies are some of the most spectacular looking galaxies in the Universe. These findings suggest that one to three per cent of nearby galaxies may have gaseous polar rings, which is much higher than suggested by optical telescopes.” Dr. Nathan Deg, researcher, Department of Physics, Engineering Physics & and Astronomy, Queen’s University, Canada, and lead author on the study.

Reionization and the ISM/Stellar Origins with JWST and ALMA (RIOJA): The Core of the Highest-redshift Galaxy Overdensity at z = 7.88 Confirmed by NIRSpec/JWST

by T. Hashimoto, J. Álvarez-Márquez, Y. Fudamoto, et al. The Astrophysical Journal Letters

An international research team led by Assistant Professor Takuya Hashimoto (University of Tsukuba, Japan) and Researcher Javier Álvarez-Márquez (El Centro de Astrobiología (CAB, CSIC-INTA), Spain) has used the James Webb Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array to observe the most distant galaxy protocluster to date, 13.14 billion light-years away. The team has successfully captured the “core region” of the galaxy protocluster, which corresponds to a metropolitan area with a particularly high number density of galaxies.

The team has revealed that many galaxies are concentrated in a small area and that the growth of galaxies is accelerated. Furthermore, the team used simulations to predict the future of the metropolitan area and found that the region will merge into one larger galaxy within tens of millions of years. These results are expected to provide important clues regarding the birth and growth of galaxies.

The study of how individual stars are born and die in galaxies, how new stars are born from remnants of old stars, and how galaxies themselves grow are important themes in astronomy, as they provide insight into our roots in the Universe. Galaxy clusters, one of the largest structures in the Universe, are the assembly of more than 100 galaxies which are bound together through mutual gravitational force. Observations of nearby galaxies have shown that the growth of a galaxy depends on its environment in the sense that mature stellar populations are commonly seen in regions where galaxies are densely collected. This is referred to as the “environment effect.” Although the environment effect has been considered an important piece to understand galaxy formation and evolution, it is not well known when the effect initiated in the history of the Universe. One of the keys to understanding this is to observe the ancestors of galaxy clusters shortly after the birth of the Universe; known as galaxy protoclusters (hereafter protoclusters), these are assemblies of about 10 distant galaxies.

Fortunately, astronomy allows us to observe the distant Universe as it was in the past. For example, light from a galaxy 13 billion light-years away takes 13 billion years to reach Earth, so what we observe now is what that galaxy looked like 13 billion years ago. However, light that travels 13 billion light-years becomes fainter, so the telescopes that observe it must have high sensitivity and spatial resolution.

(Left) 30 × 30 cutout image of NIRCam F444W around the “quintet” region. The color bar shows the surface brightness. (Middle) Black contours show the NIRSpec [O iii] 5008 Å line map overlaid on the NIRCam F444W image. Contours are drawn at ±(2, 3, 4, 5, 6) × σ, where σ is 1.47 MJy sr−1. (Right) Black contours show the ALMA Band 6 dust continuum map at the rest-frame wavelength ∼133 μm overlaid on the F444W image. Contours are drawn at ±(2.5, 3.0, 3.3) × σ, where σ is 6.7 μJy beam−1. The ellipse at the lower left corner indicates the synthesized beam size (073 × 064).

An international research team led by Assistant Professor Takuya Hashimoto (University of Tsukuba, Japan) and researcher Javier Álvarez-Márquez (Spanish Center for Astrobiology) has used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST, observing visible and infrared light) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA, observing radio waves) to study the “core region” of the protocluster A2744z7p9OD. The protocluster A2744z7p9OD had been announced as the most distant proto-cluster at 13.14 billion light-years away based on observations with JWST by another research group.

“However, we have not been able to observe the entire core region, the metropolitan area, with the largest number of galaxy candidates in this protocluster. It was unclear whether the environmental effects of galaxies had begun in this protocluster. So we decided to focus our research on the core region,” says Hashimoto.

The research team first observed the core region of this protocluster using JWST. Using NIRSpec, an instrument that observes spectra at wavelengths ranging from visible to near-infrared, the team made integral field spectroscopy observations that can simultaneously acquire spectra from all locations within the field of view. The team has successfully detected ionized oxygen-ion light ([OIII] 5008 Å) from four galaxies in a quadrangle region measuring 36,000 light-years along a side, which is equivalent to half the radius of the Milky Way galaxy (. Based on the redshift of this light (the elongation of the wavelength due to the cosmic expansion), the distance of the four galaxies from the Earth was identified as 13.14 billion light years. “I was surprised when we identified four galaxies by detecting oxygen-ion emission at almost the same distance. The ‘candidate galaxies’ in the core region were indeed members of the most distant protocluster,” says Yuma Sugahara (Waseda/NAOJ), who led the JWST data analysis.

In addition, the research team paid attention to the archival ALMA data, which had already been acquired for this region. The data captures radio emission from cosmic dust in these distant galaxies. As a result of analyses, they detected dust emissions from three of the four galaxies. This is the first detection of dust emission in member galaxies of a protocluster this far back in time. Cosmic dust in galaxies is thought to be supplied by supernova explosions at the end of the evolution of massive stars in the galaxies, which provide the material for new stars. Therefore, the presence of large amounts of dust in a galaxy indicates that many of the first-generation stars in the galaxy have already completed their lives and that the galaxy is growing.

Professor Luis Colina (El Centro de Astrobiología (CAB, CSIC-INTA)) describes the significance of the results: “Emission from cosmic dust was not detected in member galaxies of the protocluster outside the core region. The results indicate that many galaxies are clustered in a small region and that galaxy growth is accelerated, suggesting that environmental effects existed only ~700 million years after the Big Bang.”

Furthermore, the research team conducted a galaxy formation simulation to theoretically test how the four galaxies in the core region formed and evolved. The results showed that a region of dense gas particles existed around 680 million years after the Big Bang, and shows that four galaxies are formed, similar to the observed core region. To follow the evolution of these four galaxies, the simulation calculated physical processes such as the kinematics of stars and gas, chemical reactions, star formation, and supernovae. The simulations showed that the four galaxies merge and evolve into a single larger galaxy within a few tens of millions of years, which is a short time scale in the evolution of the Universe.

“We successfully reproduced the properties of the galaxies in the core region owing to the high spatial resolution of our simulations and the large number of galaxy samples we have. In the future, we would like to explore the formation mechanism of the core region and its dynamical properties in more detail,” says Yurina Nakazato, a graduate student at the University of Tokyo, who analyzed the simulation data.

Surface diffusion of carbon atoms as a driver of interstellar organic chemistry

by Masashi Tsuge, Germán Molpeceres, Yuri Aikawa, Naoki Watanabe in Nature Astronomy

Lab-based studies reveal how carbon atoms diffuse on the surface of interstellar ice grains to form complex organic compounds, crucial to reveal the chemical complexity in the universe.

Uncovering the organic (carbon-based) chemistry in interstellar space is central to understanding the chemistry of the universe in addition to the origin of life on Earth and the possibilities for life elsewhere. The list of organic molecules detected in space and understanding how they could be interacting is steadily expanding due to ever-improving direct observations. But laboratory experiments unraveling the complex processes can also offer significant clues. Researchers at Hokkaido University, with colleagues at The University of Tokyo, Japan, report new lab-based insights into the central role of carbon atoms on interstellar ice grains.

Some of the most complex organic molecules in space are thought to be produced on the surface of interstellar ice gains at very low temperatures. Ice grains that are suitable for this purpose are known to be abundant throughout the universe.

All organic molecules are based on a skeleton of bonded carbon atoms. Most carbon atoms originally formed through nuclear fusion reactions in stars, eventually getting dispersed into interstellar space when the stars died in supernovae explosions. But to form complex organic molecules, the carbon atoms need a mechanism to come together on the surface of the ice grains to encounter partner atoms and form chemical bonds with them. The new research suggests a feasible mechanism.

Above 30 Kelvin (minus 243 °C/minus 405.4 °F) carbon atoms diffuse and bond together to form diatomic carbon, C2. (Masashi Tsuge, et al. *Nature Astronomy*. September 14, 2023)

“In our studies, recreating feasible interstellar conditions in the laboratory, we were able to detect weakly-bound carbon atoms diffusing on the surface of ice grains to react and produce C2 molecules,” says chemist Masashi Tsuge of Hokkaido University’s Institute of Low Temperature Science. C2 is also known as diatomic carbon, a molecule in which two carbon atoms bond together; its formation is concrete evidence for the presence of diffusing carbon atoms on interstellar ice grains.

The research revealed that the diffusion could occur at temperatures above 30 Kelvin (minus 243 °C/minus 405.4 °F), while, in space, the diffusion of carbon atoms could be activated at just 22 Kelvin (minus 251 °C/minus 419.8 °F).

Tsuge says that the findings bring a previously overlooked chemical process into the frame for explaining how more complex organic molecules could be built by the steady addition of carbon atoms. He suggests these processes could occur in the protoplanetary disks around stars, from which planets are formed. The conditions required can also form in so-called translucent clouds, which would eventually evolve into a star forming region. This may also explain the origin of the chemicals that might have seeded life on Earth.

Besides the question of the origin of life, the work adds a fundamental new process to the variety of chemical reactions that could have built, and could still be building, carbon-based chemistry throughout the universe.

The authors also summarize the more general current understanding of the formation of complex organic chemicals in space, and consider how reactions driven by diffusing carbon atoms might modify the current picture.

Bisphosphonate conjugation enhances the bone-specificity of NELL-1-based systemic therapy for spaceflight-induced bone loss in mice

by Pin Ha, Jin Hee Kwak, Yulong Zhang, Jiayu Shi, Luan Tran, Timothy Pan Liu, Hsin-Chuan Pan, Samantha Lee, Jong Kil Kim, Eric Chen, Yasaman Shirazi-Fard, Louis S. Stodieck, Andy Lin, Zhong Zheng, Stella Nuo Dong, Xinli Zhang, Benjamin M. Wu, Kang Ting, Chia Soo in npj Microgravity

A new study finds an engineered compound given to mice aboard the International Space Station (ISS) largely prevented the bone loss associated with time spent in space. The study, led by a transdisciplinary team of professors at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Forsyth Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, highlight a promising therapy to mitigate extreme bone loss from long-duration space travel as well as musculoskeletal degeneration on Earth.

Microgravity-induced bone loss has long been a critical concern for long-term space missions. Decreased mechanical loading due to microgravity induces bone loss at a rate 12-times greater than on Earth. Astronauts in low Earth orbit may experience bone loss up to 1% per month, endangering astronaut skeletal health and increasing risk for fractures during long-duration spaceflight and later in life.

The current mitigation strategy for bone loss relies on exercise-induced mechanical loading to promote bone formation but is far from perfect for crewmembers spending up to six months in microgravity. Exercise does not always prevent bone loss, takes up valuable crew time, and may be contraindicated for certain types of injuries. The new study led by Chia Soo, MD, vice chair for research in the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, professor in Departments of Surgery and Orthopaedic Surgery at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, investigated whether systemic delivery of NELL-like molecule-1 (NELL-1) can reduce microgravity induced bone loss. Discovered by Kang Ting, DMD, DMSc at the Forsyth Institute, NELL-1 is crucial for bone development and bone density maintenance. Professor Ting also led numerous studies to show that local delivery of NELL-1 can regenerate musculoskeletal tissues such as bone and cartilage.

Systemic delivery of NELL-1 aboard the ISS requires the team to minimize the number of injections. Ben Wu, DDS, PhD and Yulong Zhang, PhD at the Forsyth Institute enhanced NELL-1’s therapeutic potential by extending the molecule’s half-life from 5.5 hours to 15.5 hours without losing bioactivity, and bioconjugated an inert bisphosphonate (BP) to create a “smart” BP-NELL-PEG molecule that more specifically targets bone tissues without the common deleterious effects of BP.

Biodistribution and BP-NELL-PEG’s mechanism of action. Study showed BP modification improved protein targeting to bone tissues in vivo.

The modified molecule was then extensively assessed by the Soo and Ting teams to determine the efficacy and safety of BP-NELL-PEG on earth. They found that BP-NELL-PEG displayed superior specificity for bone tissue without causing observable adverse effects.

To ascertain the practical applicability of BP-NELL-PEG in real space conditions, the researchers worked with Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames to prepare extensively for the SpaceX CRS-11 mission to the ISS, where astronauts Peggy Whitson, PhD and Jack D. Fisher, MS carried out the studies. Half of the ISS mice were exposed to microgravity (“TERM Flight”) for a lengthy 9-week period to simulate the challenges of long-duration space travel, while the remaining mice were flown back to Earth at 4.5 weeks post-launch, for the first ever live animal return (“LAR Flight”) of mice in US history. Both TERM and LAR Flight groups were treated with either BP-NELL-PEG or phosphate buffered saline (PBS) control. An equivalent cohort of mice remained at the Kennedy Space Center and were treated similarly with BP-NELL-PEG or PBS to serve as normal Earth gravity (“Ground”) controls. Both Flight and Ground mice treated with BP-NELL-PEG exhibited a significant increase in bone formation. The treated mice in space and on Earth displayed no apparent adverse health effects.

“Our findings hold tremendous promise for the future of space exploration, particularly for missions involving extended stays in microgravity,” said lead corresponding author Chia Soo. “If human studies bear this out, BP-NELL-PEG could be a promising tool to combat bone loss and musculoskeletal deterioration, especially when conventional resistance training is not feasible due to injuries or other incapacitating factors,” said co-co-principal investigator, Kang Ting.
“This bioengineering strategy can also have important benefits on Earth, offering a potential therapy for patients suffering from extreme osteoporosis and other bone-related conditions,” said co-co-principal investigator, Ben Wu.
“As the next step, UCLA project scientist, Pin Ha, MD, DDS, MS, is overseeing analysis of the live animal return data. We hope this will provide some insight on how to help future astronauts recover from longer duration space missions,” said Chia Soo.

Constraining Cosmological Parameters Using the Cluster Mass–Richness Relation

by Mohamed H. Abdullah, Gillian Wilson, Anatoly Klypin, Tomoaki Ishiyama in The Astrophysical Journal

One of the most interesting and important questions in cosmology is, “How much matter exists in the universe?” An international team, including scientists at Chiba University, has now succeeded in measuring the total amount of matter for the second time. The team determined that matter makes up 31% of the total amount of matter and energy in the universe, with the remainder consisting of dark energy.

“Cosmologists believe that only about 20% of the total matter is made of regular or ‘baryonic’ matter, which includes stars, galaxies, atoms, and life,” explains first author Dr. Mohamed Abdullah, a researcher at the National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics-Egypt, Chiba University, Japan. “About 80% is made of dark matter, whose mysterious nature is not yet known but may consist of some as-yet-undiscovered subatomic particles.”

“The team used a well-proven technique to determine the total amount of matter in the universe, which is to compare the observed number and mass of galaxy clusters per unit volume with predictions from numerical simulations,” says co-author Gillian Wilson, Abdullah’s former graduate advisor and Professor of Physics and Vice Chancellor for research, innovation, and economic development at UC Merced. “The number of clusters observed at the present time, the so-called ‘cluster abundance,’ is very sensitive to cosmological conditions and, in particular, the total amount of matter.”
“A higher percentage of the total matter in the universe would result in more clusters being formed,” says Anatoly Klypin from University of Virginia. “But it is difficult to measure the mass of any galaxy cluster accurately as most of the matter is dark, and we cannot see it directly with telescopes.”

Schematic diagram showing the effect on the cluster abundance by varying either Ωm (upper) or σ8 (lower) while holding the other parameter fixed.

To overcome this difficulty, the team was forced to use an indirect tracer of cluster mass. They relied upon the fact that more massive clusters contain more galaxies than less massive clusters (mass richness relation: MRR). Because galaxies consist of luminous stars, the number of galaxies in each cluster can be utilized as a way of indirectly determining its total mass. By measuring the number of galaxies in each cluster in their sample from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the team was able to estimate the total mass of each of the clusters. They were then able to compare the observed number and mass of galaxy clusters per unit volume against predictions from numerical simulations. The best-fit match between observations and simulations was with a universe consisting of 31% of the total matter, a value that was in excellent agreement with that obtained using cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations from the Planck satellite. Notably, CMB is a completely independent technique.

“We have succeeded in making the first measurement of matter density using the MRR, which is in excellent agreement with that obtained by the Planck team using the CMB method,” says Tomoaki Ishiyama from Chiba University. “This work further demonstrates that cluster abundance is a competitive technique for constraining cosmological parameters and complementary to non-cluster techniques such as CMB anisotropies, baryon acoustic oscillations, Type Ia supernovae, or gravitational lensing.”

The team credits their achievement as being the first to successfully utilize spectroscopy, the technique that separates radiation into a spectrum of individual bands or colors, to precisely determine the distance to each cluster and the true member galaxies that are gravitationally bound to the cluster rather than background or foreground interlopers along the line of sight. Previous studies that attempted to use the MRR technique relied on much cruder and less accurate imaging techniques, such as using pictures of the sky taken at some wavelengths, to determine the distance to each cluster and the nearby galaxies that were true members.