Webb telescope detects organic molecules in distant galaxy

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Astronomers have detected the most distant known organic molecules in the universe using the James Webb Space Telescope. It's the first time Webb has detected complex molecules in the distant universe.

The complex molecules were found in a galaxy known as SPT0418-47, located more than 12 billion light-years away.

The discovery sheds light on the chemical interactions that occurred within the earliest galaxies in the universe and how they relate to star formation.

On Earth, the molecules, called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, can be found in smoke, soot, smog, engine exhaust and forest fires.

The base of the organic molecules is carbon, considered to be one of the building blocks of life because it's a key element in amino acids, which form proteins.

A study detailing the findings was published Monday in the journal Nature.

The light from the dusty galaxy began traveling across the cosmos when the universe was less than 1.5 billion years old, just 10% of its current age of 13.8 billion years. The galaxy was first spotted in 2013 by the National Science Foundation's South Pole Telescope. Other observatories, such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile, have observed it since.

But the Webb telescope's infrared capabilities, which can see light invisible to the human eye and peer through cosmic dust, was able to capture new details about the galaxy. And the space observatory received a helping hand from a phenomenon called gravitational lensing.

"This magnification happens when two galaxies are almost perfectly aligned from the Earth's point of view, and light from the background galaxy is warped and magnified by the foreground galaxy into a ring-like shape, known as an Einstein ring," said study coauthor Joaquin Vieira, professor of astronomy and physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, in a statement.

Gravitational lensing was originally predicted in Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.

"By combining Webb's amazing capabilities with a natural ‘cosmic magnifying glass,’ we were able to see even more detail than we otherwise could," said lead study author Justin Spilker, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Texas A&M University, in a statement.

"That level of magnification is actually what made us interested in looking at this galaxy with Webb in the first place, because it really lets us see all the rich details of what makes up a galaxy in the early universe that we could never do otherwise," said Spilker, who is also a member of Texas A&M's George P. and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy.

Astronomers spotted the signature of the organic molecules during a careful analysis of Webb's data. The molecules are common in space.

Here on Earth, they are part of cancer-causing hydrocarbon emissions that contribute to the planet's atmospheric pollution.

Previously, astronomers thought polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons were a sign of star formation because they have observed the large molecules near bright young stars. But Webb's data revealed the presence of these molecules may not have been an indicator of star birth in the early days of the universe.

"Thanks to the high-definition images from Webb, we found a lot of regions with smoke but no star formation, and others with new stars forming but no smoke," Spilker said.

The unexpected finding is helping astronomers piece together answers to some of the lingering questions about the beginning of the universe.

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"Discoveries like this are precisely what Webb was built to do: understand the earliest stages of the universe in new and exciting ways," said study coauthor Kedar Phadke, a doctoral student of astronomy at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, in a statement. "It's amazing that we can identify molecules billions of light-years away that we’re familiar with here on Earth, even if they show up in ways we don't like, like smog and smoke. It's also a powerful statement about the amazing capabilities of Webb that we’ve never had before."

The researchers are looking forward to flexing Webb's capabilities more in the future as they search for even more distant galaxies.

"Now that we’ve shown this is possible for the first time, we’re looking forward to trying to understand whether it's really true that where there's smoke, there's fire," Spilker said. "Maybe we’ll even be able to find galaxies that are so young that complex molecules like these haven't had time to form in the vacuum of space yet, so galaxies are all fire and no smoke. The only way to know for sure is to look at more galaxies, hopefully even further away than this one."