NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has helped reveal an 11-billion-year-old discovery more massive than the Milky Way, which astronomers say should not exist.
The unprecedented discovery, which could upend our current understanding about the formation of galaxies, and also require scientists to rethink the mysterious nature of dark matter, involves an extremely old—and massive—galaxy that existed in the early universe which was home to an ancient population of stars.
What makes the discovery unique and perplexing to astronomers is that the stars observed in this primordial galaxy should not have been able to form according to current models, because there would not have been enough dark matter accumulated to enable their genesis.
The discovery is the latest in a series of findings by the James Webb Space Telescope since its launch that are challenging our existing theories about the universe, and broadening our understanding of cosmic phenomena.
According to Karl Glazebrook, a Distinguished Professor at Swinburne University of Technology and leader of an international team behind the discovery, the new findings were several years in the making and required separate observations from two of the world’s most massive telescopes to tease out enough data to determine its age through spectroscopic observations.
“We’ve been chasing this particular galaxy for seven years,” Glazebrook said in a statement, “and spent hours observing it with the two largest telescopes on earth to figure out how old it was.
However, according to Glazebrook the dormant galactic monster “was too red and too faint, and we couldn’t measure it.”
“In the end, we had to go off Earth and use the JWST to confirm its nature,” Glazebrook said.
Present models about galactic formation are in conflict, since ongoing observations that include discoveries that the James Webb Space Telescope have helped enable continue to challenge existing theoretical ideas. These include longstanding tenets of modern astrophysics like the prediction that massive galaxies were unlikely to be as prevalent in the early universe.
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