The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has detected the two oldest, most distant galaxies in the known universe, dating back just 300 million years after the Big Bang.

The stunning new discovery breaks the record of two other ancient galaxies detected by JWST, which dated back to around 330 million years after the birth of the universe.

The researchers located the ancient twin in a region of space known as Hubble’s Ultra-Deep Field.

The newly discovered galaxies – named JADES-GS-z14-0 and JADES-GS-z14-1 – in addition to being extremely old, are also unusually large for such an early birth.

In fact, the largest of them has a diameter of about 1,600 light years!

The discovery confirms previous scientific evidence that the first galaxies in the universe grew much faster than the leading theories of cosmology predict.

“It is amazing that the Universe can create such a galaxy in just 300 million years,” said study lead author Stefano Carniani, assistant professor at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa.

With information from livescience.com