El ALMA telescope in a short time it has become one of the most coveted weapons by all astronomers on the planet thanks to its power and capacity. Thanks precisely to the possibilities offered by this tool, a group of astronomers has managed to detect oxygen at the farthest point captured so far by the telescope, the young woman galaxy A2744_YD4.
One of the main peculiarities of this distant galaxy is that, to the surprise of researchers, it contains large amounts of stardust, something that could be the result of the death of a previous and primal generation of stars. This dust, in turn, is mainly composed of elements such as silicon, carbon and aluminum, elements that are present in tiny grains of sizes of one millionth of a centimeter.
Nicolas Laporte and his team discover ionized oxygen in the galaxy A2744_YD4.
As explained Nicholas Laporte, researcher at the University of London and head of the team that has made this discovery:
A2744_YD4 is not only the most distant galaxy so far observed by ALMA, but the detection of so much dust indicates that this galaxy had already been contaminated by early supernovae. It is located in an already known galaxy that originated when the universe was only four percent of its current age.
This study has made it possible to detect the brilliant emission of ionized oxygen, which has allowed them see the galaxy as it was when the cosmos was barely 600 million years old, the moment when the first stars and galaxies were forming. According to the speculations made after the studies, it appears that the galaxy would contain dust equivalent to six million times the mass of the Sun.