(Image credit: NASA/CSA/ESA, PANORAMIC team, M. Xiao (University of Geneva), CC Williams (NOIRLab), PA Oesch (University of Geneva), G. Brammer (Niels Bohr Institute))
When astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to probe the depths of the early universe, they made a joyful discovery: a galaxy that appears to be an ancient twin of the Milky Way greets us with its spiral arms.
In new images captured from light emitted just 1 billion years after the Big Bang, when the universe was about one-fourteenth its present age, the newly discovered galaxy appears fully formed, with a central bulge of old stars, a bright disk of a newborn star, and two distinct spiral arms. Given its recognizable features and impressive size, researchers have dubbed it the most distant “twin” of the Milky Way ever observed.
The discovery of a fully formed spiral galaxy at such an early stage in cosmic evolution adds to a host of recent JWST discoveries that challenge our best theories of cosmology, which suggest that it takes billions of years for such large galaxies to form through a complex series of mergers of smaller galaxies.
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