James Webb never ceases to surprise with his cosmic snapshots. The last one has revealed a big little surprise in a still life made up of dozens of galaxies along with an ephemeral nebula in the foreground. By zooming in, a formation has been discovered that looks like a kind of tiny question mark. It's unclear exactly what the object is, but it is relatively far away; Generally speaking, the redder an object appears in a field image, the greater its distance. This is because the accelerated expansion of the Universe stretches light as it travels toward us, stretching it toward the redder parts of the spectrum. The location of the spots in the original image NASA, ESA, CSA, J. DePasquale/STScI The two spots appear to be approximately the same color, raising the intriguing possibility that they could be two distant galaxies interacting. This is a phenomenon that we see a lot in the Universe, and gravitational interaction can cause these galaxies to take on interesting, elongated shapes. A closer look NASA, ESA, CSA, J. DePasquale/STScI Some of them even look like other things. The Antennae Galaxies look a bit like a mirrored bass clef (which also looks a bit like the top of a question mark). Some say that Arp 23 is similar to a rose. Arp-Madore 2026-424 is compared to a creepy skull. It's not those things, of course; It just seems to be due to a quirk of human perception known as pareidolia in which we see patterns and meaning in random arrangements of elements. The giant cosmic question mark NASA, ESA, CSA, J. DePasquale/STScI We don't usually see something that looks so much like a punctuation mark, although it is possible that if we zoom in even closer, the cosmic object will be very different. We may have the perfect combination of distance and perspective to make the two objects look meaningful to us. MORE INFORMATION news No Russia heads to the Moon successfully: it intends to be the first country to land at its promising south pole news No The mathematical formula that predicts the end of the organism's useful life To do your own research and see for yourself You can also download the full-size image from the European Space Agency (ESA) website.
