Astronomers have discovered the Milky Way, the most distant example of a galaxy in the universe similar to our own.
When the universe was just 2 billion years old, the newly discovered spiral galaxy CEERS-2112 Performer Then the gas sliced through his heart like it sliced through a no-smoking sign.of milky wayalso a spiral galaxy, is playing sports. similar bar. Scientists believe that the Milky Way’s bar may rotate in a cylindrical shape. toilet paper holder When you unravel the toilet paper, gas is poured into the center of the galaxy, causing a burst of star formation.
Astronomers had previously thought that this structure marked the end of a galaxy’s formation period, so it was only seen in older galaxies that may have fully matured, perhaps even in intermediate galaxies. It was expected that this would happen. evolution of the universe. surely, hubble space telescopePast observations on the galaxy morphology of It is shown In the early universe, there were only a limited number of galaxies.
However, new discoveries gleaned from the data james webb space telescope (JWST), conclude that it may not necessarily be true that barbed spirals must have roamed the universe for that long. The discovery of spiral galaxy CEERS-2112 reveals that galaxies similar to our own already existed 11.7 billion years ago, “when the universe was only 15 percent of its lifespan.” Luca Costantinastrophysicist at the Center for Astrobiology in Madrid and lead author of the new study told Space.com.
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JWST can collect six times more light than Hubble, allowing us to observe more detailed features of distant galaxies. Ceers-2112 is redshift 2.1 billion years have passed since the creation of the universe. Essentially, this means it took 11.7 billion years for light from the galaxy to reach JWST, Costantin said. This is a surprising discovery since galactic bars are visible in about two-thirds of the galaxy. spiral galaxyHowever, it is believed that bars appeared about 4 billion years after their birth. macrocosm.
Studying the detailed morphology of distant galaxies is essential to understanding their history and opens the door to new scenarios about galaxies. galaxy formation and evolution,” study co-author Cristina Cabello, a researcher at the Institute of Particle Physics in Madrid, said in a statement.
For example, the presence of bars in Ceers-2112 casts doubt on current theoretical models that predict that physical conditions in the early Universe must have generally prevented the formation of barred galaxies, Costantin said.
“Theoretical predictions from cosmological simulations have a very hard time reproducing such systems at that time,” he told Space.com. “We now need to understand which key physical elements are missing in the model or if we’re missing something.”
Furthermore, such research is shaping our understanding of the role. dark matter Played in the early universe.
astronomers think 85% of all matter in the universe Dark matter is a mysterious substance that is difficult to observe with telescopes because it does not interact with light at all. Dark matter is thought to have fundamentally influenced the evolution of galaxies and star formation starting 380,000 years after the Big Bang. But the results of the new study show that, at least in the case of Ceers-2112, the galaxy’s evolution was dominated by ordinary matter, which was not the case. dark matter The universe was created about 2 billion years ago. Because of the galaxy’s morphology, the study found that the contribution of dark matter to Ceers-2112’s galactic bar is very low, and instead is dominated by ordinary matter.
“This discovery shows that when the universe was only 15 percent of its actual age, despite its overabundance, the evolution of this galaxy was dominated by baryons (the ordinary matter that we are made of) rather than dark matter.” “This study confirms that Co-author Jairo Abreu is a researcher at the University of La Laguna.
“JWST revolutionized our understanding of the early universe in just one year of observations,” Costantin said. “Over the next five to 10 years, I will personally continue to take advantage of its incredible capabilities and investigate the detailed structure of the first galaxies to assemble in the universe.”
Regarding this research, paper The study was published in the journal Nature on Wednesday (November 8).