Scientists Reveal The Most Distant Galaxy We've Ever Found - ScienceAlert

By studying the oxygen content of the galaxy with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array ( ALMA), astronomers have precisely dated it to just 367 million years after the Big Bang, a time when the first lights in the Universe were still switching on and starting to propagate freely through space.

"The first images of the James Webb Space Telescope revealed so many early galaxies that we felt we had to test its results using the best observatory on Earth," says astronomer Tom Bakx of Nagoya University in Japan.

The galaxy, named GHZ2/GLASS-z12, was first spotted by JWST in July of last year, not long after the telescope opened its segmented golden eye on the infrared light of the Universe.

Bakx, Nagoya U)Each of the 66 12-meter radio antennae that make up ALMA were put to work, ultimately detecting an oxygen emission line close to the position of GHZ2/GLASS-z12.

And, based on the brightness of the emission line, they were able to infer that the galaxy had relatively quickly formed high abundances of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium.

The combined power of Webb and the radio telescope array ALMA give us the confidence to push our cosmic horizons ever closer to the dawn of the Universe."