250 New Galaxies Discovered: Hubble Spots Big Bang Frontiers

Astronomers have discovered 250 tiny galaxies that existed 600 to 900 million years after the Big Bang, according to a news release.

By using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, researchers were able take a glimpse into one of the largest samples of the faintest and earliest known galaxies in the universe. The team of researchers, led by Hakim Atek of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, claimed that these small galaxies were essential in creating the present universe.

The researchers referred to the new discovery as one of the largest samples of dwarf galaxies to be discovered at these epochs, which are the beginning of a new period in geological time. The light from the galaxies took about 12 million years to reach the telescope, according to the researchers. This enabled the researchers to take a look back in time when the universe was quite young.

The accumulated light from the galaxies revealed that these galaxies could have played a major role in one of the most mysterious periods of the universe's early history, the epoch of reionisation, where the thick fogs of hydrogen began to clear and the universe was transparent with ultraviolet light.

"If we took into account only the contributions from bright and massive galaxies, we found that these were insufficient to reionise the universe. We also needed to add in the contribution of a more abundant population of faint dwarf galaxies," said Atek, the study's lead author.

The researchers claimed these galaxies could be a major contributor in keeping the universe transparent. By evaluating these galaxies, the team estimated that the universe became fully transparent about 700 million years after the Big Bang.

"Hubble remains unrivalled in its ability to observe the most distant galaxies. The sheer depth of the Hubble Frontier Field data guarantees a very precise understanding of the cluster magnification effect, allowing us to make discoveries like these," said Mathilde Jauzac, co-author of the study from Durham University in the UK.

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