Astronomers are baffled by a handful of objects discovered in James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) data. They found half a dozen galaxies that appear to be huge and well-formed like the contemporary Milky Way, Science Daily reported.
They estimate that these galaxies could have formed about 500 to 700 million years after the Big Bang event. Current theories in cosmology suggest that such a feat would have been impossible given that they do have not enough time to mature. The discovery shows that scientists could be missing a vital stage or two in the knowledge of the evolution of the universe.
James Webb Space Telescope Spots 6 Massive Inexplicably Old Galaxies; Discovery Puzzles Astronomers
Too Big To Exist
The objects were discovered during JWST observations in its first few months of operation. The powerful space telescope investigates the Universe in infrared wavelengths, which are ideal for detecting light that has traveled for billions of years to reach Earth from the early Universe when it was weak and stretched out into longer infrared wavelengths due to space-time expansion.
One of its primary goals is to peek further into space-time than any previous device, and astronomers wasted no time in getting the first observations for that purpose.
Astronomer Joel Leja of Pennsylvania State University said in a statement via EurekAlert! that they looked into the very early universe for the first time and did not have any idea of what they are going to find. It turns out, there are objects that could question previous scientific findings and perhaps put the whole picture of galaxy formation into question.
Swinburne University of Technology astronomer Ivo Labbé, the author of the study, said in the press release via Scimex that they never detected galaxies of such massive scale and especially this early after the Big Bang.
The six galaxies were more than 12 billion years old or just 500 to 700 million years after the Big Bang. They could reach up to 100 billion times more massive than the Sun, which is too big for existing theories in cosmology.
Current cosmological models postulate that the boiling soup of particles that formed in the aftermath of the Big Bang had to cool sufficiently to crystallize into atoms, predominantly hydrogen, and helium, filling the expanse of space. Some 150 million years after the Great Bang, the first stars and galaxies began to emerge from this gas.
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Universe Breakers
Under current cosmology theories, the objects are so difficult to explain and the research team has been busy scouring their work for mistakes. Science Alert reports that the team thinks that there could be one or two things wrong and that the findings mean some significant revisions should be made.
Leja explains that they have been calling the six galaxies "Universe breakers" and noted that these objects have been living up to their name so far.
On the other hand, they are not dismissing the possibility that these objects may not be galaxies but rather something else. They could be a never-before-seen black hole or another cosmological object.
They plan to obtain spectra of the six galaxies to reveal their natures, distances, and sizes in hopes to reveal something of their chemical composition.
They published the findings of their study, titled "A Population of Red Candidate Massive Galaxies ~600 Myr After the Big Bang," in the journal Nature.
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