The Milky Way may have a twin. The discovery of the most distant spiral galaxy to date may change the way we think about both the speed and process in which such systems are birthed, an international team led by the University of Geneva (UNIGE) reported in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Astrophysicists have long thought that large spiral galaxies like the Milky Way form over several billion years in a chaotic process and initially form irregular shapes. But the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is changing that conception. It is revealing large, well-structured galaxies at much earlier times than anticipated. And its resemblance to the Milky Way is uncanny.
“Its disk spans over 60,000 light-years, comparable to our own galaxy, and contains more than 100 billion solar masses in stars,” Mengyuan Xiao, a research fellow postdoctoral researcher at UNIGE and lead author of the study, said in a press release. “This makes it one of the most compelling Milky Way analogues ever found at such an early time, raising new questions about how massive, well-ordered spiral galaxies could form so soon after the Big Bang.”
