Cosmic Question Mark Recently Spotted by the Webb Telescope in Deep Space Baffles Scientists

There are many questions about the galactic question mark just discovered.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the most powerful and advanced space observatory ever built. It was launched in December 2021 and has been exploring the mysteries of the universe ever since. One of its first discoveries was a pair of young stars called Herbig-Haro 46/47, located about 1,400 light-years away from Earth in the Vela constellation. These stars are still forming and have not yet started to shine by their own nuclear fusion. They are surrounded by gas and dust that they are accreting to increase their mass.

On Wednesday, the European Space Agency’s telescope team unveiled an image that provides the most intricate view so far of the two emerging young stars. But what caught the attention of many people was not the stars themselves, but a curious object that appeared in the background of one of JWST’s images. The object looked like a glowing red question mark, as if asking us what it was. Was it a sign from aliens? A glitch in the telescope? A cosmic joke?

It is still unclear what the strange object might be, but the answer is probably none of the above. According to astronomers, the question mark is most likely a pair of galaxies that are merging, interacting, and distorting each other’s shape.

There are “many, many galaxies outside of our own Milky Way,” said Christopher Britt, education and outreach scientist in the office of public outreach at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which manages the Webb telescope’s science operations. “This looks like the kind of thing that you get fairly frequently — as galaxies grow and evolve over cosmic time — which is that they sometimes collide with their near neighbors.

“And when that happens, they can get distorted into all kinds of different shapes — including a question mark, apparently.”

The two bright spots in the curve and the dot of the question mark could be the centers of the galaxies, while the curve itself could be the tails of gas and stars being stripped off by gravity. The object is very far away from us, possibly billions of light-years, so we are seeing it as it was in the distant past.

Galaxy mergers are common events in the history of the universe. They can trigger bursts of star formation, create new structures, and even change the fate of supermassive black holes at their cores. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, has merged with several smaller galaxies in its past, and will eventually collide with its neighbor, Andromeda, in about four billion years.

The question mark galaxy is not the only interesting background object that JWST has captured. In another image of Herbig-Haro 46/47, taken with a different instrument, a faint spiral galaxy can be seen near the top right corner. This galaxy is also very distant and old, and shows us how galaxies looked like when they were young and forming.

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These images demonstrate the incredible power and sensitivity of JWST, which can reveal both nearby and faraway wonders of the cosmos. The telescope can observe in infrared light, which can penetrate through dust and gas that block visible light. It can also zoom in on tiny details and capture high-resolution images of objects that are otherwise too faint or blurry to see.

JWST is expected to revolutionize our understanding of astronomy and astrophysics, by studying everything from planets and stars to galaxies and black holes. It will also help us answer some of the biggest questions we have about our origins and our place in the universe.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6