Early Universe’s Most Complete Image Emerges

An unprecedented look into the early universe has been achieved through the Crystal Project, revealing intricate details of star, dust, and gas interactions within the cosmos’s first galaxies. The Chile-led initiative promises novel insights and is coordinated by the University of Concepción.

Galactic Ecosystems Unveiled

Rodrigo Herrera-Camus, director of the Millennium Core of Galaxies (Mingal) and astronomer at the University of Concepción, spearheaded the investigation. According to Herrera-Camus, “For the first time, and thanks to the Alma Observatory, we were able to study the cold gas from these galaxies, the raw material from which the stars are born. We discovered that these young galaxies had complex structures.”

Furthermore, scientists found galactic winds expelling gas and unexpected levels of cosmic dust and metals. The project involved over 40 astronomers worldwide.

Telescopic Collaboration

Observations made via the Alma Observatory, along with the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes, facilitated the “census” of gas, the dust and the stars in galaxies from when the universe was approximately one billion years old. As Herrera-Camus notes, “Crystal provides the type of detailed data that simply were not possible before Alma and JWST.”

In 2023, the James Webb Space Telescope spotted what may be the oldest galaxy ever observed, existing just 320 million years after the Big Bang (Space.com).

Reconstructing the Early Universe

A doctor in astrophysics from Maryland University stated that “these discoveries allow reconstructing the internal ecosystem of the first galaxies” and understanding how “after billions of years of evolution, they gave rise to galaxies such as the Milky Way“.

Key Researchers

The CRISTAL program, marking Alma’s first long-term project in its decade of operation directed from Chile, involved principal co-researchers such as Manuel Aravena from Diego Portales University, and Jorge González-López of the Astrophysics Institute of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. The team also included Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 winner, professor Reinhard Genzel, from the Max Planck Institute of Extraterrestrial Physics.

The research group, under Herrera-Camus’s leadership, is currently analyzing new observations obtained via the James Webb Space Telescope. These fresh images promise more detailed insights into the properties of hot gas around stars, including the abundance and characteristics of elements present.