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NASA uncovers distant “super Earth” exoplanet located 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’re observing, 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 considerably 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 colossal scale of the Big Wheel within a mere two-billion-year timeframe.
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 the Milky Way has had approximately 10 billion more years to expand compared to the Big Wheel.”
He and his collaborators determined that the Big Wheel is the most massive galaxy ever seen from around two billion years after the universe began, and it appears significantly larger compared to our current Milky Way, which formed approximately ten billion years subsequent to this period.
This raises an intriguing question: How did this galaxy manage to become so massive in what seems like such a brief period?
Nanayakkara said, ‘Locating one of these galaxies isn’t an issue for cosmological theories since it could simply be an anomaly. However, if we continue to discover more, we might need to reconsider and perhaps refine our 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 cosmos.
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 dust 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 throughout the cosmos.
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 elaborated.
simultaneously, the gas entering the galaxy had to be properly aligned with its rotational direction, enabling the disc to expand rapidly without disturbance. Therefore, it required an ideal alignment,” Nanayakkara noted.
He along with his coworkers reported their discoveries in the journal
Nature Astronomy
.
Locating a galaxy similar to the Big Wheel was akin to searching for a needle in a haystack. According to Nanayakkara, his team had less than a two percent chance of stumbling upon it.
Next, the scientists will start searching for additional abnormally massive galaxies to try and figure out precisely how uncommon they truly are.
If these occurrences turn out not to be as rare as experts presently think, they might need to reassess all their understanding regarding how galaxies form.
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