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The James Webb Space Telescope looked at a galaxy so old and far away that its light stretched out like a rubber band on its way here.
Hidden inside that light, scientists found a strange little glitch — like a scratch on a record. It might mean that, right after the Big Bang, space didn't smooth out evenly. It could have left giant invisible "cracks" that helped shape the first galaxies.
Astronomers scanning a deep-field target detected a faint anomaly in the infrared spectrum of a galaxy at redshift z = 11.4 — meaning we're seeing light from roughly 13.4 billion years ago.
The pattern points to a theoretical class of early-universe defects called cosmic strings — ultra-thin, ultra-dense filaments left over from the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang. If confirmed, it would be indirect evidence that space itself has "seams."
- FrameworkSpacetime perturbation theory
- Redshiftz = 11.4 (IR flux shift)
- ConstraintΩcs ≈ 1.2 × 10⁻⁶
- InstrumentHigh-res dispersion filter array
- HypothesisNon-standard cosmic-string signature
- ConfidencePreliminary, single detection
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