NASA Webb Pushes Boundaries of Observable Universe Closer to Big Bang - UNIVERSE

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has topped itself once again, delivering on its promise to push the boundaries of the observable universe closer to cosmic dawn with the confirmation of a bright galaxy that existed 280 million years after the big bang. By now Webb has established that it will eventually surpass virtually every benchmark it sets in these early years, but the newly confirmed galaxy, MoM-z14, holds intriguing clues to the universe’s historical timeline and just how different a place the early universe was than astronomers expected.

“With Webb, we are able to see farther than humans ever have before, and it looks nothing like what we predicted, which is both challenging and exciting,” said Rohan Naidu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, lead author of a paper on galaxy MoM-z14 published in the Open Journal of Astrophysics. 

Due to the expansion of the universe that is driven by dark energy, discussion of physical distances and “years ago” becomes tricky when looking this far. Using Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument, astronomers confirmed that MoM-z14 has a cosmological redshift of 14.44, meaning that its light has been travelling through (expanding) space, being stretched and “shifted” to longer, redder wavelengths, for about 13.5 of the universe’s estimated 13.8 billion years of existence.

“We can estimate the distance of galaxies from images, but it’s really important to follow up and confirm with more detailed spectroscopy so that we know exactly what we are seeing, and when,” said Pascal Oesch of the University of Geneva, co-principal investigator of the survey.

Image: COSMOS Field MoM-z14 Galaxy (NIRCam Image)

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows galaxy MoM-z14 as it appeared in the distant past, only 280 million years after the universe began in the big bang. 

Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Rohan Naidu (MIT); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

Intriguing Features

MoM-z14 is one of a growing group of surprisingly bright galaxies in the early universe – 100 times more than theoretical studies predicted before the launch of Webb, according to the research team.

“There is a growing chasm between theory and observation related to the early universe, which presents compelling questions to be explored going forward,” said Jacob Shen, a postdoctoral researcher at MIT and a member of the research team.

One place researchers and theorists can look for answers is the oldest population of stars in the Milky Way galaxy. A small percentage of these stars have shown high amounts of nitrogen, which is also showing up in some of Webb’s observations of early galaxies, including MoM-z14.

“We can take a page from archeology and look at these ancient stars in our own galaxy like fossils from the early universe, except in astronomy we are lucky enough to have Webb seeing so far that we also have direct information about galaxies during that time. It turns out we are seeing some of the same features, like this unusual nitrogen enrichment,” said Naidu.

With galaxy MoM-z14 existing only 280 million years after the big bang, there was not enough time for generations of stars to produce such high amounts of nitrogen in the way that astronomers would expect. One theory the researchers note is that the dense environment of the early universe resulted in supermassive stars capable of producing more nitrogen than any stars observed in the local universe.

The galaxy MoM-z14 also shows signs of clearing out the thick, primordial hydrogen fog of the early universe in the space around itself. One of the reasons Webb was originally built was to define the timeline for this “clearing” period of cosmic history, which astronomers call reionization. This is when early stars produced light of high enough energy to break through the dense hydrogen gas of the early universe and begin travelling through space, eventually making its way to Webb, and us. Galaxy MoM-z14 provides another clue for mapping out the timeline of reionization, work that was not possible until Webb lifted the veil on this era of the universe.

Legacy of Discovery Continues

Even before Webb’s launch, there were hints that something very unanticipated happened in the early universe, when NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope discovered the bright galaxy GN-z11 400 million years after the big bang. Webb confirmed the galaxy’s distance — at the time the most distant ever. From there Webb has continued to push back farther and farther in space and time, finding more surprisingly bright galaxies like GN-z11.

As Webb continues to uncover more of these unexpectedly luminous galaxies, it’s clear that the first few were not a fluke. Astronomers are eagerly anticipating that NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, with its combination of high-resolution infrared imaging and extremely wide field of view, will boost the sample of these bright, compact, chemically enriched early galaxies into the thousands.

“To figure out what is going on in the early universe, we really need more information —more detailed observations with Webb, and more galaxies to see where the common features are, which Roman will be able to provide,” said Yijia Li, a graduate student at the Pennsylvania State University and a member of the research team. “It’s an incredibly exciting time, with Webb revealing the early universe like never before and showing us how much there still is to discover.”

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

To learn more about Webb, visit: https://science.nasa.gov/webb  

Source: NASA Webb Pushes Boundaries of Observable Universe Closer to Big Bang - NASA Science   

Building energy resilience by understanding nuances of power outages across the US - Energy & Green Tech

Geographic distribution of power outages across the continental U.S. during heat wave events, including both standalone heat waves and those compounded with other weather events. Areas not associated with heat wave-related outages are shown in light gray. Credit: Scientific Reports (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-025-15065-x

More frequent and intense weather phenomena like heat waves, windstorms, or atmospheric rivers often come in pairs and these challenging combinations stress the power grid and lead to outages. A multi-year analysis is the first of its kind to analyze combined weather events and county-level outage data across the United States.

The research was published in Scientific Reports and was led by researchers from UConn's Outage Prediction Modeling (OPM) team, including Environmental Engineering Program Ph.D. student Shah Saki, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor and director of the Institute of Environment and Energy, Emmanouil Anagnostou, assistant research professor Giulia Sofia, and Bandana Kar, researcher at the National Laboratory of the Rockies.

When it comes to strain on the grid, heat is a big factor, explains Saki.

"While heat has long been recognized as a stressor on power systems, the new analysis shows its effects intensifying and interacting with other weather hazards," says Saki.

The study examines how heat waves impact power outages in different regions across the contiguous United States. The regional nuances are important; for instance, if the outage is compounded by other weather phenomena like thunderstorms, high wind, or intense precipitation, which may be more frequent in some areas compared to others. These extreme weather events also tend to follow high heat days, Saki explains, and researchers realized they could not look at heat waves alone, but that the research would be more impactful if they analyzed the data from a multi-hazard standpoint.

"A tricky aspect of research like this is that utilities usually do not share outage information upfront with the customers or researchers," says Saki, "and access requires extra permissions."

Anagnostou explains, "However, thanks to a Department of Energy (DOE) and Oak Ridge National Lab program called DOE Eagle-I system, we now have access to outage records from 2015 to 2022, which made this analysis possible."

The approach was also novel in that it did not focus on a single region; rather, the scope included the eight Independent Service Operator (ISO) authority regions across the country. For the sake of the analysis, Saki explains that some of the ISOs were combined.

The researchers combined this outage data with county-level weather data, where they made assumptions about the start and endpoints for each outage, and also the primary cause.

To address this, the researchers matched outage timing with National Weather Service (NWS) alerts, allowing them to identify the most likely contributing weather conditions. All of these data were used to make a self-organizing map via deep machine learning.

"We try to see if there is a compounded effect by heat waves, and at the same time the outage is happening, how do we determine the main driving factors causing these outages?" says Sofia. "Is it wind, or rain, or just the heat alone? The two major things we looked at were what factors are causing the most frequent or most damaging outages?"

Saki explains that the machine learning algorithm looks for similarity within the data to create clusters; in this case, clusters of regions impacted by the same weather variables. Fortunately, the process is automated and unsupervised, and the clusters reveal trends and patterns about the outages that may otherwise be overlooked.

"That's one of the biggest advantages of using clusters to identify which of the weather phenomena and the outages are alike, and based on that, we can consider which was the most damaging and impactful weather phenomenon associated with that cluster," says Saki.

The results show the importance of considering the nuances between heat wave-related power outages in different regions, says Anagnostou. For example, in California heat is oftentimes compounded by high wind events. In Texas, heat waves are frequently followed by periods of intense rain. These compounding events stretch the grid beyond normal operating limits, and result in outages.

Most outages were short, says Saki, but that was not always the case.

"The 50 percentile is about five hours, so the recovery time is quick, but the maximum is around 358 hours, or 14 days," he says. "It was surprising to me that these compounding events can cause that long of an outage."

One notable example of compounding effects was Hurricane Laura, which was preceded by a multi-day heat wave in August of 2020.

"When we have compounding effects, as in the case of Hurricane Laura, those outages were long," says Saki. "This also happened with some heat waves which caused wildfires in some part of the California. Those are the major findings which we found in the paper."

Saki says he expected to see more outages in regions like Florida, but that was not the case. This may be due to programs that have been implemented to increase grid resilience, which is a testament to the importance of research and proactive efforts to build energy resilience.

"Long-term investments in grid hardening can meaningfully reduce outage risk, even as extreme heat increases," says Saki.

The findings underscore that regionally tuned resilience planning outperforms national one-size-fits-all approaches, as power grids fail for different reasons depending on local climate and weather patterns.

"Power outages are closely tied to regional climatic behavior," says Anagnostou. "This kind of analysis helps policymakers and regulatory bodies better understand whether their region is more vulnerable to extreme heat alone or to compounding weather events."

The findings have already garnered attention from policy makers and media outlets who see the impact the findings can have in preparing for the future. Saki's ongoing Ph.D. research is examining the causes of damage to the grid because that information can help inform future projects to harden the energy system.

"If we move to take this data to the next step into the future climate, how that's going to impact the future scenarios, because the policymakers are interested to know the impacts now, and how that's going to impact in the future," he says. 

Provided by University of Connecticut 

by Elaina Hancock, University of Connecticut

edited by Gaby Clark, reviewed by Robert Egan 

Source: Building energy resilience by understanding nuances of power outages across the US