- NASA uncovers distant "super Earth" exoplanet located merely 20 light-years from us.
The James Webb Space Telescope has identified a massive galaxy that defies expectations.
With this incredibly potent telescope, a group of scientists managed to look far into the past and witness this. never-before-seen spiral galaxy , known as the Big Wheel, since it appeared just two billion years following the Big Bang.
The more distant regions of space that astronomers explore with telescopes such as the Hubble James Webb , the farther back in time they observe, nearly approaching the moment of the Big Bang itself.
A galaxy that is two billion years old is deemed youthful from a cosmological perspective; however, the size of the Big Wheel during that era indicated that it ought to be considerably more ancient.
The scientists concluded that this galaxy spans approximately 98,000 light years, which is similar in scale to our considerably more mature Milky Way. the Milky Way , is today.
Given our present knowledge of the early universe as interpreted by experts, it would be extremely improbable for a galaxy to reach the colossal scale of the Big Wheel within a mere two-billion-year timeframe.
The study's co-author, astronomer Themiaya Nanayakkara from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, commented, "It’s important to keep in mind that the Milky Way has had approximately 10 billion more years to develop compared to the Big Wheel."
He and his collaborators determined that the Big Wheel is the most massive galaxy observed from two billion years after the universe began, and it is probably significantly larger than our current Milky Way Galaxy, which existed approximately ten billion years later.
This raises an intriguing question: How did this galaxy manage to become so massive in what seems like such a brief period?
Nanayakkara noted that discovering one of these galaxies isn’t necessarily a challenge for cosmological theories since it could simply be an anomaly. However, if we continue to find more, he suggests that we might need to reconsider and refine our current models. New Scientist .
However, he proposes a theory that might account for how the Big Wheel was able to expand so quickly without violating our known universal laws.
This suggests that several galaxies crashed into each other and fused rapidly to create a single massive spiral galaxy, speeding up the development process typically caused by the slow accumulation of gas and cosmic debris over time.
This could have been facilitated by the Big Wheel's exceptionally crowded environment.
Nanayakkara noted in a piece for that this area is situated in a densely populated section of space, with galaxy concentrations being 10 times greater than what is usual in most parts of the universe. The Conversation .
This crowded setting most likely offered perfect circumstances for the galaxy to expand rapidly. It may have undergone mergers that were mild enough to allow the galaxy to keep its spiral disk structure," he clarified.
Simultaneously, Nanayakkara noted, 'The gas entering the galaxy had to be perfectly aligned with its rotational direction, enabling the rapid expansion of the disk without causing disruptions. Thus, it required an ideal alignment.'
He and his co-authors released their research in the journal Nature Astronomy .
Locating a galaxy similar to the Big Wheel was akin to searching for a needle in a haystack. Nanayakkara stated that his team had less than a two percent chance of stumbling upon it.
Next, the scientists will embark on a search for additional exceptionally large galaxies to ascertain precisely how uncommon they might be.
If these occurrences turn out not to be as rare as experts presently think, then they might need to reassess all their understanding regarding how galaxies form.
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