- NASA uncovers 'Super Earth' Exoplanet Located at a Distance of 20 Light-Years Away
The James Webb Space Telescope has identified a massive galaxy that defies expectations.
With the aid of this remarkably 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 reaching the moment of the Big Bang itself.
A galaxy that is two billion years old is deemed youthful from a cosmic perspective; however, the size of the Big Wheel during that era indicated that it ought to be far more ancient.
The scientists concluded that this galaxy spans approximately 98,000 light years, which is about the same dimensions as our considerably older 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 scale of the Big Wheel in merely two billion years.
The study's co-author, Themiya Nanayakkara, an astronomer from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, stated, "It’s important to keep in mind that our galaxy, the Milky Way, has had approximately 10 billion more years to evolve compared to what you might call the ‘Big Wheel.’"
He and his collaborators determined that the Big Wheel is the most massive galaxy known from two billion years after theBig Bang, and it appears significantly larger than our own Milky Way Galaxy as it exists approximately 10 billion years following that era.
This raises an intriguing question: How did this galaxy manage to become so massive in what seems like such a brief period?
Nanayakkara said that discovering one of these galaxies isn’t an issue for cosmological theories since it could simply be an anomaly. However, if we continue to find more, 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 the known principles of the universe.
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 an article for that this area is situated in a densely populated section of space, with galaxy concentrations being 10 times higher 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 form,' he clarified.
Simultaneously, Nanayakkara noted, 'The gas entering the galaxy had to be properly aligned with its rotational direction, enabling the disk to expand rapidly without disturbance. It was essentially a flawless alignment.'
He and his associates published their research in the journal Nature Astronomy .
Locating a galaxy akin to the Big Wheel was similar to searching for a needle in a haystack. According to Nanayakkara, his team had less than a two percent probability of stumbling upon it.
Next, the scientists will start searching for additional abnormally massive galaxies to try and ascertain just how uncommon they truly are.
If these phenomena turn out not to be as rare as experts currently think, then they might need to reassess all their understanding of how galaxies form.
Read more