An international team of astrophysicists have found six candidate galaxies hiding in data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) that are so old and massive they can't be explained by current cosmological models.
The galaxies are thought to date back to around 500 million years after the Big Bang, more than 13 billion years ago. According to current cosmological models, galaxies at this point in time should be in their infancy and be made up of only a few stars.
However, all six of the newly discovered candidate galaxies are gigantic and contain a similar number of stars to the modern-day Milky Way.
This story is from the March 2023 edition of BBC Science Focus.
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This story is from the March 2023 edition of BBC Science Focus.
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