Webb finds galaxies polluted early universe 500M years after Big Bang

The young universe may have become chemically enriched far earlier than astronomers once believed. Observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have revealed signs that galaxies were already producing and releasing oxygen, carbon and silicon into the gas around them just 500 million years after the Big Bang. A report by Tech Explorist, based on a study published in Nature Astronomy, says researchers identified blueshifted absorption lines from three galaxies with redshifts between 7.2 and 9.3. The signatures suggest that metal-rich gas was flowing outward through galactic winds, spreading material into intergalactic space before the midpoint of cosmic reionisation. The finding challenges the image of an early universe filled with untouched hydrogen and helium.