Astronomers find that the content of heavy metal nickel in the "teenager" galaxy is much higher than expected.

CTOnews.com A team of astrophysicists led by Northwestern University recently used the James Webb Space Telescope to observe early "juvenile" galaxies 2 billion to 3 billion years after the Big Bang and found much more heavy metal nickel than expected.

Published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the team observed 33 distant galaxies for 30 hours, collecting light waves from 23 galaxies and synthesizing a picture showing the average temperatures and elements of these galaxies.

The team found trace amounts of lighter elements such as hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, oxygen, silicon, sulfur and argon, but the nickel content in the results far exceeded their expectations and shocked them.

Specifically, the team analyzed the results of chemical evolution using electric line constraints in the Interstellar Aurora (CECILIA) survey and found that these galaxies were not only hotter than expected, but they also appeared to contain heavy elements such as nickel.

Nickel is rarely observed even in older nearby galaxies-this is after multiple lifetimes of the star, meaning multiple rounds of supernovae, and heavier elements have a chance to synthesize and diffuse throughout the galaxy.

CECILIA: The Faint Emission Line Spectrum of z 2-3 Star-forming Galaxies,Allison L. Strom1,2, Gwen C. Rudie3, Ryan F. Trainor4, Gabriel B. Brammer5, Michael V. Maseda6, Menelaos Raptis4, Noah S. J. Rogers1,2,7, Charles C. Steidel8, Yuguang Chen 9, and David R. Law10,Allison L. Strom et al 2023 ApJL 958 L11，DOI 10.3847/2041-8213 / ad07dc。