My nerdy excitement took over when I wrote this story, and I wanted to share the news with a wider audience. Consider this special issue financed by generous A6 donors.
I hope this picks up your mood amid all the dark news everywhere else; it certainly did for me.
I will publish a standard issue in the next 24-48 hours.
A6- Special Issue: Unlocking the universe’s ancient mysteries
Two teams of NASA scientists used the James Webb telescope to solve some fascinating mysteries about one of the oldest galaxies in the universe.
The GN-z11 galaxy was formed when the 13.6-billion-year-old universe was just 430 million years old, and it is exceptionally bright, which astronomers hope is due to the presence of Population III stars.
Our Sun — which is 98.6% helium and hydrogen — is a Population I star because it contains a relatively large (1.4%) amount of elements heavier than hydrogen or helium. Population II stars are older and have a lower percentage.
Population III stars are hypothetical, and theoretically contain no elements heavier than hydrogen or helium. In other words, they are the pure firstborn stars.
Scientists believe GN-z11 may contain Population III stars because they found a gaseous halo surrounding the galaxy that they cannot see beyond.
“The fact that we don't see anything else beyond helium suggests that this clump must be fairly pristine,” said Roberto Maiolino, one of the heads of the project.
In theory, that gas should collapse to form Population III stars.
Population III stars are important because — if they exist — they would have been formed when the universe transitioned from a relatively boring period of nothingness to the dynamic and vibrant place we occupy today.
The hope is that those stars can offer insights into what sparked that expansion of activity.
A massive black hole in the middle
The other team discovered a supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy, making it the furthest such black hole ever discovered by scientists.
They feel confident in the discovery because of the highly dense gas found in the area, which is a common feature of a black hole. They also learned that the galaxy is expelling extremely powerful winds, another common phenomenon of black holes.
Scientists believe the black hole is around 2 million times heavier than our Sun.
Black holes are always cool, but scientists are getting good at finding them, which makes the Population III stars more intriguing (in my opinion).
That being said, scientists are discovering evidence that black holes and galaxies formed simultaneously and that black holes may have amplified the formation of galaxies.
Black holes are formed when a supermassive star collapses onto itself, creating an object so dense that not even light can escape its gravity.
Other News: The Voyager I probe may be reaching the end of its life
From the first four paragraphs of my article:
One of the most remarkable achievements in space exploration reached a moment of true concern after the Voyager I space craft began sending incomprehensible messages back to Earth.
In December, NASA announced that it was working to fix onboard computers that stopped communicating with one of the probe’s subsystems and could no longer send scientific or engineering data back to Earth.
A Tuesday, March 5 interview with NPR ramped up concern when Suzanne Dodd of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory told the radio network, “It basically stopped talking to us in a coherent manner,” adding that the problem was “serious.”
Rather than using binary code to send back decipherable information, it is simply sending back an alternating set of zeros and ones, which Dodd’s team has failed to reset.
What I am reading
How Illegal Fishing Ships Hide
The economics of skiing in America
The New York Times is facing backlash over its coverage of Donald Trump and the 2024 election
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Definitely cool. Thanks for posting.