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JWST is living up to the hype. After the first scientific results were published last week, even more new exciting stuff is coming out. Among them, there are the observations of what could be the furthest galaxy yet. Called GLASS-z13, its light comes from just over 300 million years after the Big Bang.

The red object in the center of the zoomed-in image is GN-z11, the previous candidate for the most distant galaxy discovered. One of JWST’s primary goals is to observe the very first galaxies that formed after the big bang 13.8 billion years ago. The Hubble ST discovered the current oldest galaxy, GN-z11, about 400 million years after the universe’s birth.Astrophysicist of Harvard University and his colleagues from the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts believe they have discovered the oldest galaxy in a JWST dataset called GLASS, which was publicly released a few weeks ago. GLASS-z13 is the name of a galaxy that formed about 300 million years after the big bang. Rohan’s team also discovered a second galaxy that is the same age as GN-z11.

In this time, these two galaxies have the equivalent mass of about a billion suns. The team concludes that this is a very unique feature only found in galaxies up to 500 million years old, and it could be a hint that stars formed faster than we thought in the early universe. Glass-z11, a galaxy close to the Big Bang, has also begun to develop a disc-like structure as a result of its rotation.

These two new galaxies are dwarfs in comparison to our own Milky Way galaxy. (In comparison to the Milky Way, GLASS z-13 is only 1600 light years across and z-11 is 2300 light years across; the Milky Way is approximately 100,000 light years across.) Astrophysicists from the Niehls Bohr Institute in Denmark, Gabriel Brammer, who was also a member of the GLASS team and assisted in the discovery of GN-z11, explained that more research and analysis are needed to determine the exact distance between these two galaxies.

Only James Webb ST is capable of doing so.

JWST is extremely powerful, and it should be able to make discoveries like this on a regular basis. It will discover galaxies much closer to the Big Bang than these two galaxies, perhaps 200 million years after the Big Bang, when the first galaxies and stars are thought to have formed.

READ MORE: James Webb Space Telescope Might Be Able To Detect Other Civilizations by Their Air PollutionAstronomers estimate that our galaxy has about one exoplanet for every star. Of course, some stars have many planets, such as our, which has eight. And some stars have none. However, if a star lives long enough, planet formation appears to be the rule rather than the exception.

That doesn’t mean astronomers will be able to map all of those billions of stars. The number of exoplanets that have been measured or counted in some way is much smaller.

As of this writing, the total number of confirmed exoplanets stands at 5,108. Astronomers, on the other hand, are surprisingly good at figuring out what they can’t see. They are aware that their telescopes are insufficiently powerful or precise to detect the most elusive planets – those that are very small, very far from their stars, or orbit stars very far from Earth. And conversely, there are regions of space where astronomers are pretty confident they’ve found all the planets within a certain range.

By combining the knowledge of what they can see – the known exoplanets – with the knowledge of what they can’t see – the parts of space currently beyond our ability to investigate – astronomers end up at the approximation of one planet per star. In a galaxy far, far away lies an exoplanet circling a binary system that contains a neutron star or black hole.

Astronomers believe they have discovered the first extragalactic exoplanet beyond our own galaxy. The binary system M51-ULS-1, located 28 million light-years away near the heart of the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51), consists of either a neutron star or a black hole tangoing with a more typical companion star.

Astronomers used X-ray data rather than more traditional visual observations to locate the distant planet hidden in this system. "We are trying to open up a whole new arena for finding other worlds by searching for planet candidates at X-ray wavelengths, a strategy that makes it possible to discover them in other galaxies," said study lead Rosanne Di Stefano of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in a press release.

To find the first extragalactic planet,

scientists decided to look for passing planets within X-ray binaries. A white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole would pull material from a companion star in these systems. When this material collides with the exotic stellar remnant, it becomes superheated and emits X-rays.

Unlike optical light transits, where a relatively small planet only blocks a tiny amount of starlight, the area where X-rays are produced in such binary systems is small enough that even a planet can block a significant portion (if not all) of the X-ray light. This means that X-ray transits can be found at much greater distances than visual transits.

The black hole or neutron star

in the M51-ULS-1 system is closely orbited by a star 20 times the mass of the Sun. This makes the system one of the most visible X-ray binaries in M51. Using Chandra data, researchers discovered that the X-rays typically emitted by the system dropped to zero for 3 hours. The researchers believe that a Saturn-sized exoplanet is orbiting the compact object at a distance of 19.2 astronomical units (AU; where 1 AU is the average distance between Earth and the Sun). That is roughly twice the distance between Saturn and the Sun.

Of course, an exoplanet isn’t the only possibility for why the X-ray signal was disrupted. A cloud of dust passing in front of an X-ray source can also obscure it. The researchers did consider this explanation, too, but they ultimately concluded it was less likely than an exoplanet.

Unfortunately, it will take a long time to confirm the extragalactic detection. Because of its large orbit, the candidate will not pass in front of the source for another 70 years.

Rough past

If M51-ULS-1 is a planet, the Saturn-sized object has a turbulent past.

The presence of a neutron star or black hole indicates that the system once housed not only the current companion star, but also another dying star. This doomed star would have used up all of its fuel before exploding as a supernova, bathing any nearby planets in intense radiation.

And, because the system’s massive current companion star is still alive and well, it’s entirely possible that this extragalactic exoplanet will be forced to survive another destructive supernova in the future.With only one star in the sky, our Solar System appears to be an outlier. Most stars in the Milky Way galaxy have at least one gravitationally bound stellar companion, implying that two-star worlds such as Tatooine are not uncommon.

However, star systems are not limited to a maximum of two stars. We discovered systems with up to seven stars linked together in a complex orbital dance. And now, scientists have found what they believe may be a first for astronomy: an exoplanet orbiting a system of three stars, also known as a stellar trinary.

To be clear, exoplanets have previously been discovered in trinary systems – orbiting only one of the system’s stars. If this new discovery is validated, the exoplanet will be in orbit around all three stars, which has never been observed before.Stars in the Milky Way are not typically born alone. Their birthplaces are massive molecular clouds, where dense clumps of gas collapse under gravity.

As these clumps spin, the cloud’s material condenses into a disk, which accretes onto the forming star. If this disk fragments, another star, or multiple stars, may form in the same location – forming a small stellar family of siblings. What remains of the disk after the star has formed can go on to form planets.

It is estimated that 40 to 50 percent of stars have a binary companion, with another 20 percent in systems with three or more stars.

These systems will be quite gravitationally complex, making it difficult for smaller objects to stick around – but, despite this, it is estimated that around 2.5 percent of exoplanets are in multiple systems consisting of three or more stars.

To date, 32 exoplanets have been discovered in trinary systems. And then a system called GW Orionis came along.Located about 1,300 light-years away, GW Orionis caught the attention of astronomers because it is surrounded by a massive, misaligned protoplanetary disk that circles all three stars.

Using the powerful Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers confirmed another feature of the system: a significant gap in the protoplanetary disk.

Gaps in protoplanetary disks are most likely caused by planets forming, according to our models of planet formation. These planets sweep up the dust and gas in their orbital path as they orbit the star, clearing it and leaving a gap.

Things aren’t always so clear-cut in GW Orionis. Because the three stars would generate a complex gravitational field, any strange features in the disk could have been created by the stars themselves.

Previous research suggested that this is unlikely; the gravitational interaction between the stars alone is insufficient to have carved a gap in the disk, leaving a forming exoplanet as the most likely explanation.A new analysis has now confirmed this interpretation. A team of researchers led by astronomer Jeremy Smallwood of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas rebuilt a model of the GW Orionis system using N-body and three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations.

They found, just as researchers before them had, that the torque generated by the stars is not sufficient to have split the protoplanetary disk.

Instead, the culprit is most likely a gas giant in the process of formation, such as Jupiter, or a group of gas giants. We haven’t seen the exoplanet, so there’s still room for speculation, but the agreement between the two separate research efforts appears to favor the baby exoplanet interpretation.

This could imply that the planet formation process can survive more extreme conditions than previously thought, such as complex environments like the space around triple stars.

"It’s really exciting because it makes the theory of planet formation really robust," Smallwood said. "It could mean that planet formation is much more active than we thought, which is pretty cool."

The team hopes that astronomers will be able to see the exoplanet or exoplanets directly in upcoming observations of the GW Orionis system.

The research has been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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