A group of astronomers stumbled upon a huge spiral galaxy, about five times more than our Milky Way, covering twice the size of the area, making it one of the largest known galaxies. But the most surprising feature of the Milky Way is not its enormous size, but its fact that it was in the early days of the universe, which was only 2 billion years old.
“This galaxy is one of the largest spiral galaxies ever, unprecedented in the early days of this universe.” “Ultimately, this galaxy will be deprived of gas and cannot survive modern times. It’s like finding live dinosaurs before extinction.”
Steidel is a member of an international team of astronomers led by the University of Milano-Bicocca, which published the discovery in natural astronomy on March 17. The team’s observations were conducted using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a partner between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
The researchers accidentally noticed that in JWST images taken by nearby quasars, the large anomaly galaxy is a powerful, active super-large black hole. The team then followed up with JWST to learn more about the size, precise distance, rotation speed and mass of the object. Because the speed of light is limited, observations of objects in the distant universe capture light from past times. JWST data show that the huge specimens are not only large, but also rotate at extremely high speeds. This led to the team’s nickname “Big Wheel”.
Before its discovery, it was believed that disk-shaped galaxies in the early universe were smaller. (Disk galaxies include spiral galaxies and other circular galaxies without spiral arms). The Great Wheel is about three times larger than any previously discovered galaxy, has similar mass in similar cosmic eras, and its mass is at least the galaxy predicted by current cosmological simulations. The radius of the Milky Way is spread over 100,00 light-years.
The discovery raises the question: How is the Milky Way so fast? The team is uncertain, but suspects that the answer is related to the fact that it lives in a very dense area of space, filled with many young galaxies, which will eventually merge into a series of huge gravity boundaries.
“A very dense environment hosting the big wheels remains a relatively untapped area,” concluded Sebastiano Cantalupo, co-author of the University of Milan-Bikoca. “A further targeted observation is needed to build statistical samples of huge disks in the early universe, thus opening a new window in the early stages of the Milky Way.”
Natural astronomy research, titled “Billion Years of Huge Disks After the Big Bang,” was funded by the European Research Council, the Fondazione Cariplo Foundation, NASA and the Australian Research Council.
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