{"id":729104,"date":"2026-01-29T18:16:25","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T18:16:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/729104\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T18:16:25","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T18:16:25","slug":"nasa-telescopes-spot-surprisingly-mature-cluster-in-early-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/729104\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA telescopes spot surprisingly mature cluster in early Universe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Astronomers at The University of Manchester have played a leading role in the discovery of a new cosmic object that is much larger than anything astronomers have seen before in the distant universe.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

This new discovery captures the cosmic moment when a galaxy cluster \u2013 among the largest structures in the universe \u2013 started to assemble only about a billion years after the big bang, one or two billion years earlier than previously thought possible. This result, made using NASA\u2019s Chandra X-ray Observatory and James Webb Space Telescope,\u00a0 is described in a paper published today (28 January) in the journal\u00a0Nature.<\/a><\/p>\n

The findings will require astronomers to rethink when and how the largest structures in the universe formed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThis may be the most distant confirmed protocluster ever seen,\u201d said Akos Bogdan of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) who led the new Nature study. \u201cJADES-ID1 is giving us new evidence that the universe was in a huge hurry to grow up.\u201d<\/p>\n

The object is known as JADES-ID1 for its location in the \u201cJWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey\u201d, or JADES. It has a mass about 20 trillion times that of the Sun. Astronomers classify JADES-ID1 as a \u201cprotocluster\u201d because it is currently undergoing an early, violent phase of formation and will one day turn into a galaxy cluster.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

This object was first discovered and reported in an\u00a0earlier study<\/a>\u00a0led by The University of Manchester\u2019s Qiong Li using deep JWST data, which was published last year\u00a0 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.\u00a0<\/p>\n

JADES-ID1 is found at a much larger distance \u2013 corresponding to a much earlier time in the universe \u2013 than astronomers expected for such systems, providing a new mystery of how something so massive could form so quickly.<\/p>\n

Galaxy clusters contain hundreds or even thousands of individual galaxies immersed in enormous pools of superheated gas, along with large amounts of unseen dark matter. Astronomers use galaxy clusters to measure the expansion of the universe and the roles of dark energy and dark matter, among other important cosmic studies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very important to actually see when and how galaxy clusters grow,\u201d said co-author Gerrit Schellenberger, also of CfA. \u201cIt\u2019s like watching an assembly line make a car, rather than just trying to figure out how a car works by looking at the finished product.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Chandra and Webb data reveal that JADES-ID1 contains the two properties that confirm the presence of a protocluster: a large number of galaxies held together by gravity. Webb sees at least 66 potential members that are also sitting in a huge cloud of hot gas detected by Chandra. As a galaxy cluster forms, gas falls inward and is heated by shock waves, reaching temperatures of millions of degrees and glowing in X-rays.<\/p>\n

What makes JADES-ID1 exceptional is the remarkably early time when it appears in cosmic history. Most models of the universe predict that there likely would not be enough time and a large enough density of galaxies for a protocluster of this size to form only a billion years after the big bang. The previous record holder for a protocluster with X-ray emission is seen much later, about three billion years after the big bang.<\/p>\n

‘;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Astronomers at The University of Manchester have played a leading role in the discovery of a new cosmic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":729105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3845],"tags":[901,13,216805,74,70,79906,65433,16,15,29191],"class_list":["post-729104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-astronomy","tag-headlines","tag-jodrell-bank","tag-physics","tag-science","tag-science-and-engineering","tag-sciences","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-university-of-manchester"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115979759529464822","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/729105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}