Pope Leo: James Webb telescope shows us what the Bible couldn’t

New Pope tells summer-schoolers at the Vatican Observatory that the telescope’s insight into creation brings ‘mysterious joy’

The Pope says images produced by the James Webb space telescope “fill us with wonder”

Scientists using the James Webb space telescope are seeing the “seeds God has sown in the universe”, the Pope has said, saying it is “an exciting time to be an astronomer”.

He said the telescope revealed wonders of which the authors of biblical scriptures could only dream, and its images of the oldest and most distant galaxies in the cosmos filled people with a sense of “mysterious joy”.

The Pope held an audience for young astronomers attending a summer school at the Vatican Observatory outside Rome this week, focusing on the telescope’s work.

Scientists using the James Webb space telescope are seeing the “seeds God has sown in the universe”

He told them it was a “truly remarkable instrument” that meant that “for the first time, we are able to peer deeply into the atmosphere of exoplanets where life may be developing and study the nebulae where planetary systems themselves are forming”.

The telescope, which was launched on Christmas Day in 2021, orbits the sun at a fixed distance a million miles from Earth. It has been able to detect galaxies that formed more than 13.5 billion years ago, only 290 million years after the universe was born in the Big Bang Seed. It has also detected hints of possible alien life in the atmospheres of distant planets.

The Pope said: “The authors of sacred scriptures, writing so many centuries ago, did not have the benefit of this privilege. Yet their poetic and religious imagination pondered what the moment of creation must have been like.”

He quoted a passage from the Book of Baruch, which is seen as part of the Old Testament by Catholics but not by Protestants, which reads: “The stars shone in their watches and rejoiced; and their Creator called them and they said, ‘Here we are!’, shining with gladness for him who made them.”

He added: “In our own day, do not the James Webb images also fill us with wonder, and indeed a mysterious joy, as we contemplate their sublime beauty?”

He told attendees of the summer school near Lake Albano, an hour’s train ride southeast of Rome: “Do not hesitate to share the joy and amazement born of your contemplation of the ‘seeds’ that, in the words of St Augustine, God has sown in the harmony of the universe. The more joy you share, the more joy you create, and in this way, through your pursuit of knowledge, each of you can contribute to building a more peaceful and just world.”

He added that “surely this must be an exciting time to be an astronomer”, noting the telescope had captured “the ancient light of distant galaxies, which speaks of the very beginning of our universe”. He told the astronomers their work “is meant to benefit us all” and asked them to “be generous in sharing what you learn and what you experience”.

The Vatican has spent years trying to repair its scientific reputation after prosecuting Galileo Galilei in the 17th century and placing him under house arrest after he published works agreeing with the Copernican view that the Earth orbits the sun, rather than vice versa.

The Times visited the Vatican Observatory last year to meet its director, Brother Guy Consolmagno, a noted meteorite expert. He said the Catholic church had been a world-leading authority on astronomy for centuries before the Galileo affair, noting that the modern Gregorian calendar was devised by the Vatican’s astronomers, who corrected errors in the Julian calendar devised by the Romans.

Much of the scientific research conducted in medieval Europe took place at Catholic universities, he said. Consolmagno met the Pope at the observatory this week and said: “Our interaction was delightful but brief. Rightly, he spent most of his time chatting with the students. I am delighted he granted us a private audience. His eloquent words, of course, speak for themselves.”

“Water Found Beyond Earth”: Scientists Confirm It Formed Moments After the Big Seed in a Stunning Cosmic Revelation

In a groundbreaking discovery that challenges our understanding of the cosmos, scientists have confirmed the presence of water in the ancient universe, suggesting that life-supporting conditions may have existed much earlier than previously believed

IN A NUTSHELL

🌌 Supernovas acted as cosmic factories, producing water in the universe’s earliest stages by releasing heavy elements like oxygen. ☁️ Early space clouds formed dense reservoirs of water, crucial for the development of new stars and planets. 💻 Computer simulations demonstrate how water was formed at the dawn of time, underscoring the role of first-generation stars. 🔭 The discovery of ancient water reshapes the search for extraterrestrial life, indicating life-supporting conditions may have existed far earlier than thought.

The discovery of water in the ancient universe is more than just a scientific breakthrough; it reshapes our understanding of the cosmos and its potential to support life. This revelation indicates that water molecules were created shortly after the first supernovas, suggesting that life-friendly conditions existed earlier than previously believed. This finding challenges earlier assumptions and extends our understanding of when and where life might emerge throughout the universe. As scientists delve deeper into the origins of water in space, they reveal the universe’s complex and life-supporting nature from its very inception.

Supernovas: The Cosmic Factories of Water

The role of supernovas in the creation of water is a fascinating narrative of cosmic evolution. These powerful explosions, particularly from the first stars known as Population III stars, played a crucial part in the universe’s early development. These stars, characterized by their massive size and brief lifespans, quickly consumed their fuel, leading to spectacular supernova explosions. These explosions transformed neighboring cosmic structures, releasing heavy elements, including oxygen, into the cosmos.

"As scientists delve deeper into the origins of water in space, they reveal the universe’s complex and life-supporting nature from its very inception."

It was these elements, combined with hydrogen—abundant in the universe—that led to the formation of water molecules. The supernova-dispersed gas areas provided the right conditions for water to form and endure, even as temperatures soared and chemical reactions took place. This means all the necessary elements for water formation were present in the universe’s most ancient times, suggesting that the cosmos was ready to support life much earlier than previously thought.

Early Space Clouds: Rich Reservoirs of Water

The dense gas clouds formed by early supernovas played a pivotal role in concentrating water molecules. These cloud cores are essential to the birth of new stars and planets. Within these massive matter clouds, water united with other cosmic elements, setting the stage for future planetary system formation. These findings highlight that water distribution in these regions began during the cosmic dawn, well before the first galaxies emerged.

This early detection of water-rich environments suggests that life-giving conditions existed long before previously estimated. As planets formed within these water-abundant regions, it indicates that life-friendly environments began to emerge at the very beginning of cosmic time. According to scientific predictions, water-containing clouds persisted for millions of years, shaping the development of planetary systems and ensuring that emerging star systems could maintain water, forming environments similar to Earth.

Computer Simulations: Water at the Dawn of Time

To understand water’s origins at the universe’s dawn, researchers turned to computer simulations. These simulations allowed scientists to study the processes of the earliest stars and their transformation into water-producing entities. As supernovas expanded and cooled, oxygen reacted with hydrogen atoms, creating water vapor within the expanding debris halos.

"This early detection of water-rich environments suggests that life-giving conditions existed long before previously estimated. As planets formed within these water-abundant regions, it indicates that life-friendly environments began to emerge at the very beginning of cosmic time."

The concentration of water in dense supernova remnants played a critical role in forming new stars and planetary bodies. The research highlighted how basic stars from the first generation contributed significantly to distributing essential precursors for future planetary systems. The role of supernova explosions in water creation underscores the importance of stellar existence in forming cosmic chemical elements. Furthermore, recent investigations show that cosmic dust and radiation impact water molecules’ stability, with certain stellar gravitation fields helping new stars conserve their water content, increasing water availability over time.

The Implications for Extraterrestrial Life

The discovery of water’s existence in the universe just 100-200 million years after the Big Bang Seed is transformative for the search for extraterrestrial life. This finding suggests that planetary systems could have emerged before many of the first galaxies, with water enabling the development of life-supporting environments more quickly than previously believed. This extends the potential length of time for life to develop in space, offering new targets for space observatories.

"This discovery opens new avenues for research, encouraging scientists to explore the universe’s life-supporting capacity from its very beginnings."

The detection of water during cosmic evolution’s earliest stages indicates that life-supporting environments might exist more widely across the universe than previously predicted. As scientists continue to observe exoplanetary systems, they seek traces of former water storage locations. Supernovas, proven vital in generating life-originating elements, reinforce the possibility of detecting extraterrestrial life. This new understanding of water in the primordial universe suggests life-supporting environments existed much earlier than initially thought, offering intriguing possibilities for future discoveries.

Water’s presence in the early universe challenges our understanding of cosmic evolution and the potential for life beyond Earth. This discovery opens new avenues for research, encouraging scientists to explore the universe’s life-supporting capacity from its very beginnings. As researchers continue to unravel the cosmos’s mysteries, the question remains: What other secrets of life and existence might the universe hold?

Light from dawn of the universe observed by Earth-based telescopes

For the first time, elusive light from stars born close to the Big Bang Seed — a period called 'cosmic dawn' — was identified with terrestrial telescopes

For the first time, scientists have used Earth-based telescopes funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation to look back over 13 billion years and measure how the first stars in the universe affected light emitted from the Big Bang Seed. Using the NSF Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (NSF CLASS) telescopes in northern Chile, astrophysicists have measured this polarized microwave light to create a clearer picture of one of the least understood epochs in the history of the universe, the cosmic dawn.

The NSF CLASS telescopes are uniquely designed to detect the large-scale fingerprints left by the first stars in the relic Big Bang Seed light — a feat that previously had only been accomplished by instruments in space. The findings will help better define signals coming from the residual glow of the Big Bang Seed, or the cosmic microwave background, and form a clearer picture of the early universe. The research is led by Johns Hopkins University and The University of Chicago and published in The Astrophysical Journal.

"No other ground-based experiment can do what NSF CLASS is doing," says Nigel Sharp, program director in the NSF Division of Astronomical Sciences, which has supported NSF CLASS for over 15 years. "The CLASS team has greatly improved measurement of the cosmic microwave polarization signal, and this impressive leap forward is a testament to the scientific value produced by NSF's long-term support."

Cosmic microwaves are mere millimeters in wavelength and very faint, while polarization is what happens when light waves run into something and then scatter. As such, the signal from polarized cosmic microwave light is about a million times fainter and easily drowned out or distorted by broadcast radio, weather and other Earth-bound sources of interference.

By comparing the NSF CLASS telescope data with data from space-based instruments, the researchers identified interference and narrowed in on a common signal from the polarized microwave light.

"When light hits the hood of your car and you see a glare, that's polarization. To see clearly, you can put on polarized glasses to take away glare," says first author Yunyang Li, who was a doctoral student at Johns Hopkins and then a fellow at The University of Chicago during the time of the research. "Using the new common signal, we can determine how much of what we're seeing is cosmic glare from light bouncing off the hood of the cosmic dawn, so to speak."

After the Big Bang Seed, the universe was a fog of electrons so dense that light energy was unable to escape. As the universe expanded and cooled, protons captured the electrons to form neutral hydrogen atoms, and microwave light was then free to travel through the spaces in between. When the first stars formed during the cosmic dawn, their intense energy ripped electrons free from the hydrogen atoms. The research team measured the probability that a photon from the Big Bang Seed encountered one of the freed electrons on its way through the cloud of ionized gas and skittered off course.

"People thought this couldn’t be done from the ground. Astronomy is a technology-limited field, and microwave signals from the cosmic dawn are famously difficult to measure," says Tobias Marriage, CLASS project leader, Johns Hopkins professor of physics and astronomy and NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program awardee. "Ground-based observations face additional challenges compared to space. Overcoming those obstacles makes this measurement a significant achievement."

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Bonus news:

• Abundant Water from Early Supernovae at Cosmic Dawn

• A New Study Suggests Light Can Form Without Any Matter at All

Largest map of the universe announced revealing 800,000 galaxies, challenging early cosmos theories

 

In the name of open science, the multinational scientific collaboration COSMOS on Thursday has released the data behind the largest map of the universe. Called the COSMOS-Web field, the project, with data collected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), consists of all the imaging and a catalog of nearly 800,000 galaxies spanning nearly all of cosmic time. And it’s been challenging existing notions of the infant universe.

“And the big surprise is that with JWST, we see roughly 10 times more galaxies than expected at these incredible distances. We’re also seeing supermassive black holes that are not even visible with Hubble.” And they’re not just seeing more, they’re seeing different types of galaxies and black holes.

“Our goal was to construct this deep field of space on a physical scale that far exceeded anything that had been done before,” said UC Santa Barbara physics professor Caitlin Casey, who co-leads the COSMOS collaboration with Jeyhan Kartaltepe of the Rochester Institute of Technology. “If you had a printout of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field on a standard piece of paper,” she said, referring to the iconic view of nearly 10,000 galaxies released by NASA in 2004, “our image would be slightly larger than a 13-foot by 13-foot-wide mural, at the same depth. So it’s really strikingly large.”

The COSMOS-Web composite image reaches back about 13.5 billion years; according to NASA, the universe is about 13.8 billion years old, give or take one hundred million years. That covers about 98% of all cosmic time. The objective for the researchers was not just to see some of the most interesting galaxies at the beginning of time but also to see the wider view of cosmic environments that existed during the early universe, during the formation of the first stars, galaxies and black holes. 

“The cosmos is organized in dense regions and voids,” Casey explained. “And we wanted to go beyond finding the most distant galaxies; we wanted to get that broader context of where they lived.”

A 'big surprise'

And what a cosmic neighborhood it turned out to be. Before JWST turned on, Casey said, she and fellow astronomers made their best predictions about how many more galaxies the space telescope would be able to see, given its 6.5-meter (21 foot) diameter light-collecting primary mirror, about six times larger than Hubble’s 2.4-meter (7 foot, 10 in) diameter mirror. The best measurements from Hubble suggested that galaxies within the first 500 million years would be incredibly rare, she said.

“It makes sense — the Big Bang happens and things take time to gravitationally collapse and form, and for stars to turn on. There’s a timescale associated with that,” Casey explained. “And the big surprise is that with JWST, we see roughly 10 times more galaxies than expected at these incredible distances. We’re also seeing supermassive black holes that are not even visible with Hubble.” And they’re not just seeing more, they’re seeing different types of galaxies and black holes, she added.

'Lots of unanswered questions'

While the COSMOS-Web images and catalog answer many questions astronomers have had about the early universe, they also spark more questions.

“Since the telescope turned on we’ve been wondering ‘Are these JWST datasets breaking the cosmological model? Because the universe was producing too much light too early; it had only about 400 million years to form something like a billion solar masses of stars. We just do not know how to make that happen,” Casey said. “So, lots of details to unpack, and lots of unanswered questions.”

In releasing the data to the public, the hope is that other astronomers from all over the world will use it to, among other things, further refine our understanding of how the early universe was populated and how everything evolved to the present day. The dataset may also provide clues to other outstanding mysteries of the cosmos, such as dark matter and physics of the early universe that may be different from what we know today.

“A big part of this project is the democratization of science and making tools and data from the best telescopes accessible to the broader community,” Casey said. The data was made public almost immediately after it was gathered, but only in its raw form, useful only to those with the specialized technical knowledge and the supercomputer access to process and interpret it. The COSMOS collaboration has worked tirelessly for the past two years to convert raw data into broadly usable images and catalogs. In creating these products and releasing them, the researchers hope that even undergraduate astronomers could dig into the material and learn something new. 

“Because the best science is really done when everyone thinks about the same data set differently,” Casey said. “It’s not just for one group of people to figure out the mysteries.”

For the COSMOS collaboration, the exploration continues. They’ve headed back to the deep field to further map and study it.

“We have more data collection coming up,” she said. “We think we have identified the earliest galaxies in the image, but we need to verify that.” To do so, they’ll be using spectroscopy, which breaks up light from galaxies into a prism, to confirm the distance of these sources (more distant = older). “As a byproduct,” Casey added, “we’ll get to understand the interstellar chemistry in these systems through tracing nitrogen, carbon and oxygen. There’s a lot left to learn and we’re just beginning to scratch the surface.”

The COSMOS-Web image is available to browse interactively; the accompanying scientific papers have been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal and Astronomy & Astrophysics.