Since ancient times, humans have looked to the stars for answers to life’s biggest questions. Now, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is throwing a cosmic question mark right back at us, revealing a bizarre object that appears as a giant question mark in the universe.
This intriguing cosmic enigma is a pair of distant galaxies, warped and magnified by a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. This occurs when the gravity of a massive foreground object, such as a galaxy cluster, bends the light from objects behind it. Think of it as a cosmic magnifying glass, distorting and multiplying the image of the background objects.
The JWST’s Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph instrument spotted the question mark-shaped object, revealing a rare and captivating cosmic configuration.
In this case, a massive galaxy cluster named MACS-J0417.5-1154 is warping and magnifying a pair of tightly bound galaxies located far behind it. The image of these galaxies is multiplied five times, creating four copies visible in the question mark’s body and a fifth copy drifting off to the lower right side. (An unrelated galaxy forms the lower dot of the question mark.)
This particular formation is known as a “hyperbolic umbilic gravitational lens,” according to researchers. The lensed galaxies, located roughly 7 billion light-years from Earth, date back to a time when the universe was roughly half its current age. This was a period of rapid star formation, during which many galaxies, including our own Milky Way, were beginning to grow and take shape.
By studying these lensed galaxies, astronomers gain valuable insights into the early universe and the formation of galaxies like our own Milky Way.
“These galaxies, seen billions of years ago when star formation was at its peak, are similar to the mass that the Milky Way galaxy would have been at that time,” said Marcin Sawicki, an astronomer at Saint Mary’s University. “Webb is allowing us to study what the teenage years of our own galaxy would have been like.”
This cosmic question mark is just one of many fascinating discoveries made by the JWST, a powerful telescope that continues to reveal the universe’s secrets. As the JWST gathers more data, we can expect to uncover even more extraordinary phenomena and gain a deeper understanding of the universe’s vastness and complexity.
