Six massive very early galaxies, each containing about as many stars as our own, discovered by space telescope James Webb in the infant universe. The discovery overturns scientists’ understanding of galaxy evolution, as such large galaxies were not expected to be found in such an early universe, when it was only 3% of its current age, about 500 to 700 million years after the initial ” Big Bang” (Big Bang).

Scientists from various countries (USA, Australia, Denmark, Spain), led by assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics Joel Lezza of the University of Pennsylvania, made the relevant publication in the journal “Nature”. As he stated, “these objects are much more massive than anyone expected. We expected to find only tiny, young baby galaxies in that time period, yet we discovered galaxies as mature as our own in an era which until now was considered the dawn of the universe”.

Check out James Webb’s photos of the six galaxies:

“It’s crazy. You wouldn’t expect the early universe to be able to self-organize so quickly. These galaxies shouldn’t have had enough time to form,” said Erica Nelson, assistant professor of astrophysics at the University of Colorado. “Our galaxy creates one to two new stars every year. Some of those galaxies must have created hundreds of new stars every year throughout the history of the universe. If even one of these galaxies is real, it will bring us with the limits of our understanding of cosmology. Another possibility is that these things are a different kind of strange object, like faint quasars (ie active galactic nuclei), which would be just as interesting,” he added.

The James Webb, the most powerful telescope ever launched into space, is equipped with infrared instruments capable of detecting the light coming from the most ancient galaxies and their stars. Thus, Webb allows scientists to look back in time and space, a distance of about 13.5 billion years, near the beginning of the universe as we know it.

“It’s our first look this far back, so it’s important to keep an open mind about what we’re actually seeing. Although the evidence suggests that these are probably galaxies, I think there’s a reasonable chance that at least a few of these objects are massive.” black holes. “Regardless of that, the amount of mass we discovered means that the known stellar mass of that period of our universe is up to 100 times greater than previously thought. This is an impressive data change,” Lezza said.

“The revelation that the formation of massive galaxies began extremely early in the history of the universe overturns what many of us took for granted as scientific fact,” he added, noting that these early galaxies are so large that they contradict almost all (99% ) its existing models cosmology. This leads either to the reformation of cosmological models, or to the revision of the prevailing scientific understanding of the creation of galaxies, namely that they began as small clouds of gas and dust, which gradually grew larger over time.

In any case, according to the researchers, it calls for a radical change in the prevailing view of how the universe evolved. “We took a look at the very early universe for the first time and had no idea what we were going to find. It turns out that we found something so unexpected that it really poses a problem for science. It calls into question the whole picture of the formation of the first galaxies. My first thought was that we had made a mistake and that we would eventually figure it out and move on with our lives. But we still haven’t found any error, despite all our efforts,” the lead researcher pointed out.

The scientists will now try to confirm their findings by taking images of the spectrum of massive early galaxies, so they have more data on their true distances, as well as their gases and other components. “A spectroscopic analysis will tell us immediately if these things are real or not. It will show us how big they are and how far away they are,” Lezza said.

Recently, another scientific team had announced that with the help of James Webb, they had found four even earlier galaxies, when the universe was only 350 million years old. But those galaxies were predictably much smaller than the early giants now discovered.