Galaxy 97% old, the size of the universe, appears before the eyes of Earthlings for the first time

Traveling back more than 13.4 billion years, the ALMA super telescope system located in Chile's Atacama Desert has captured an image of one of the oldest galaxies in the universe in radio light.

A study led by Nagoya University and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan has measured the age of an extremely distant galaxy that they recorded using radio signals using the ALMA Radio Telescope Array - one of the world's most powerful ground-based telescope systems.

The existence of this galaxy was previously confirmed by the James Webb Space Telescope. As a spacecraft, James Webb has a wider field of view, but when it comes to pinpointing a distant object in radio light, ALMA's "magic eye" comes into its own.

Radio images of the early universe and the oldest galaxy ever found - (Image: ALMA).

The galaxy, dubbed GHZ2/GLASS-z12, is older than any object ever observed or dated, according to a paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. When ALMA captured the image, the Big Bang had only occurred 367 million years ago.

More specifically, light takes a while to reach Earth's instruments, so an object as distant as this galaxy, 13.4 billion light years away, means the light needed to create its image would have taken that many years to travel.

In other words, ALMA has succeeded in peering into the past, observing an ancient object in its youth, in the midst of a universe still forming.

"The bright line emission suggests that this galaxy rapidly enriched its gas reservoirs with elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. This gives us some clues about the formation and evolution of the first generation of stars, as well as their lifetime," said co-author Jorge Zavala from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

This special discovery also provides many other interesting data about the world that is always mysterious to humanity - the early universe - and will continue to receive "special care" from international research groups.

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