James Webb Telescope reveals ‘Sleeping Beauty’ galaxies in the early universe – snoozing where they would not exist

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Astronomers have discovered more than a dozen “sleeping” galaxies that pauted their star formation within the first billion years after the big bang.

The discovery, made with data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), illuminates a fascinating phase in the lives of early galaxies and can give more indications about how galaxies evolve.

There are several reasons why galaxies can stop forming new stars. One is the presence of super -massive black holes in their centers. These colosses emit intense radiation that heats and exhausts cold gas, the most important ingredient for star formation. In addition, larger adjacent galaxies can remove or heat this cold gas, leading to a stop in star formation. As a result, these galaxies can stay sleeping or ‘extinguished’ for an indefinite period of time.

Another reason why galaxies become inactive is stellar feedback. That is when the gas in the Melkweg is heated and deported by stellar processes such as supernovas, intense stellar winds or the pressure associated with star light. The Melkweg therefore runs a temporary “quiet” period.

“This is usually a temporary phase, which usually lasts around 25 million years,” said Alba Covelo Paz, a doctoral student at the University of Geneva and the main author of a new study describing the findings, live science in an e -mail. For millions of years, the gas that was expressed falls back in and cools the hot gas again. As soon as there is enough cold gas again, the Milky Way can start forming new stars.

Although the sleeping phase is often observed in nearby galaxies, astronomers have only found four sleeping galaxies in the first billion years of the universe. Of these, three masses had a billion solar mass and one had a mass above 10 billion solar masses. The limited observations and scattered properties of sleeping galaxies were not enough to get a clear picture of the early star formation.

But with the help of the sensitive spectroscopic data from JWST, an international team of astronomers discovered 14 sleeping galaxies with a wide range of masses in the early universe, which shows that sleeping galaxies are not limited to low or very high mass reaches.

The findings were uploaded to the pre-print database Arxiv on 27 June and have not yet been by peer reviewed.

Breathing

Researchers did not expect them to see sleeping galaxies in the early universe. Because these galaxies are young, they should strongly form many new stars, astronomers thought. But in an article from 2024 researchers described the first discovery of a sleeping galaxy in the early universe.

“The first discovery of a sleeping galaxy in the early universe was such a shock because that Milky Way was previously observed with Hubble, but we could not know that it was sleeping until JWST,” said Paz.

That is because, in contrast to the Hubble Space Telescope, the NIRSpSprument of JWST can see both light of these galaxies that are red to be near-infrared wave lengths, and also offer spectroscopic details about this.

Astronomers were curious to know why early galaxies stopped forming stars and whether this was common with a wide range of stellar masses. A hypothesis was that the galaxies had erupts from star formation and then quiet periods before they started again. Paz and her team were looking for the galaxies that were between the eruptions of Star Formation. They used publicly available Galaxy data in the Dawn JWST archive.

They investigated the light of approximately 1,600 galaxies, looking for signs of new stars that do not form. They also focused on clear signatures of middle or old stars in the light of the galaxies. The team found 14 galaxies, ranging from around 40 million to 30 billion solar masses, which had paused the star formation.

“We have now found 14 sources that support this burstiness process, and we discovered that they all stopped the star formation between 10 [million] And 25 million years before we observed them, “Paz explained. That means that these 14 galaxies follow a stop-and-go fashion of star formation instead of constantly forming stars, and they have been quiet for at least 10 million to 25 million years.

These relatively short snooze hints that stellar feedback, such as supernovas or stellar winds, made sure that they became quiet and that they could eventually start their stellar factories again, Paz said.

However, there is still uncertainty, she added. “We can’t certainly confirm it because we don’t know how long they stay asleep, and if they stay sleeping for another 50 million years, this would mean that the cause of their extinguishing is different,” Paz explained.

This scenario would suggest that the galaxies are dead. Nevertheless, the current properties of these galaxies support a cycle of attacks and starts.

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Because sleeping galaxies are so rare, a lot remains mysterious about them. However, astronomers hope that future observations will help shed light on these dormant death factories. An upcoming JWST program called “Sleeping Beauties” will be dedicated to discovering sleeping galaxies in the early universe, Paz said. With this program, astronomers can estimate how long a galaxy will remain in this silent phase and help them understand the Bursty star formation process.

“There are still many strangers for us, but we are one step closer to unraveling this process,” said Paz.