NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has discovered a galaxy that was born 13 billion years ago, right after the Big Bang. Scientists believe the galaxy named JADES-GS-z13-1 formed just 330 million years after the big bang. The Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on the telescope caught the light from the galaxy. 

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The amazing thing about the discovery is that the light that reached Webb travelled through a fog of hydrogen that filled the early universe. A paper was published about the discovery of the galaxy in the journal Nature. 

Astronomers wrote in the paper that the age of the galaxy was determined by measuring its redshift, that is, how much the light stretched as it travelled vast distances. The galaxy's redshift was found to be 13.0, which meant that it was seen just 330 million years after the Big Bang.

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This is close to the age of the universe, which is estimated to be a little over 13 billion years.

How did light escape the blanket of hydrogen?

The ancient universe was shrouded in a thick blanket of hydrogen. However, it slowly lifted over billions of years through the process of reionisation, and once that happened, light could escape from newborn galaxies and spread out to other regions of the universe.

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Roberto Maiolino, a team member from the University of Cambridge and University College London said in a statement, "GS-z13-1 is seen when the universe was only 330 million years old, yet it shows a surprisingly clear, telltale signature of Lyman-alpha emission that can only be seen once the surrounding fog has fully lifted."

The age of the galaxy came as a surprise

He added that the age of the galaxy caught them by surprise as it was totally unexpected.

The process of reionisation occurred after the first generation of stars was born within young galaxies. Light has now travelled to far reaches of the cosmos, and astronomers can't understand how. They are trying to understand how the light from this galaxy reached Webb when it should have been absorbed by the dense fog of hydrogen.

Kevin Hainline, a scientist from the University of Arizona says this galaxy "shouldn't have found."

"We could think of the early universe as shrouded with a thick fog that would make it exceedingly difficult to find even powerful lighthouses peeking through," Hainline said.

Scientists say that the discovery will have massive consequences about understanding "how and when the universe reionised."