When NASA discovered a cosmic question mark

The James Webb Space Telescope has photographed a cosmic object in the shape of a question mark, and scientists are trying, based on their experience, to understand what it might be.

especially, According to CNN, The original image, posted July 26, depicted a pair of young stars named Herbig-Haro 46/47. Although located 1,470 light-years away in the constellation Waterfall within our Milky Way galaxy, stars are still actively forming and orbiting each other.

The question mark has not been studied in depth – scientists do not know its origin

These two stars have been observed and studied by space and ground-based telescopes since the 1950s, but the highly sensitive Webb telescope has allowed for the highest resolution and most detailed images to date. It has the ability to observe the universe at longer wavelengths than other space telescopes.

The Webb telescope sheds light on the origins of our universe, but the appearance of this mysterious object in the background of this image leaves more questions than answers. The cosmic question mark has not been closely observed or studied, so scientists aren’t entirely sure of the object’s origin and composition.

“The first thing you can rule out is that this is a star in our Milky Way galaxy,” said Matt Kaplan, associate professor of physics at Illinois State University. “Stars always have these really big elevations, and that’s because stars are like points. It’s called diffraction from the edges of the mirrors and the beams that kind of support the camera in the middle.”

What do scientists say?

Kaplan added that the Webb telescope usually allows you to see six or eight stellar “spines” if you look closely. “It tells you right away it’s not a star,” he said of the question-mark-shape phenomenon.

It could be a merger of two galaxies, perhaps billions of light-years apart, much further than Herbig-Haro 46/47, said Christopher Brett, an education and outreach scientist in the Office of Public Outreach at Space Telescope Science. The institute that manages the science operations of the Webb telescope.

There are “many, many galaxies outside our own Milky Way,” Brett said. “This seems like the kind of thing that happens a lot — as galaxies grow and evolve through cosmic time — that is, they occasionally collide with their closest neighbors.” And when that happens, they can be distorted into all kinds of different shapes — including a question mark, obviously.

How often has the phenomenon been observed?

It’s likely the first time this particular object has been seen, experts said, but galaxy mergers in the shape of a question mark have happened before — including an inverted version formed by the Antennae galaxies in the Corvus constellation. Moreover, most galaxies have had multiple interactions like this during their history, Brett said, but they were short-lived.

“There’s no way to define anything (in) space,” Kaplan said. “The sun moves as it revolves around the galaxy, and the galaxy, which is made up of stars, moves in whatever direction gravity pulls it.”

This merger is also the ultimate fate of our galaxy, which will merge with the Andromeda Galaxy in about 4 billion years, Brett said — but what shape our galaxy will take is unknown.

What could be a space question mark?

Brett said the shape of the question mark could be “an indication of a merger where these two galaxies interact with a gravitational force”. “That question mark at the top seems to me to be very much what we call a tidal tail, where the stream of stars and gas has somehow been cut off and thrown into space.”

Brett and Kaplan said that collecting more spectral data on the object will reveal more details, such as its distance and chemical composition.

Nobody would, because that’s also “a local finds a mushy chicken akin to George Washington,” Kaplan said. “But (there are) observations you can make if you’re motivated enough.”