The revolution that the observations of the James Webb telescope have brought about for the science of the Cosmos is beginning to bear fruit: a team of researchers led by the Center for Astrobiology (CAB) has discovered the most distant galaxy similar to the Milky Way of those observed so far. now, revealing that the Universe was more organized than thought from an early era.
The discovery, published this Wednesday by Nature magazine, shows a galaxy that forms a spiral around a bar of stars - similar to the image of the Milky Way - that would have formed 11.7 billion years ago, when the universe only had 2.1 billion years old, 15% of its current age, which is estimated at 13.8 billion years.
The discovery of ceers-2112, the scientific name that researchers have given to the newly found galaxy, dismantles the conception that the structure of spiral galaxies, such as the Milky Way, would not have been consolidated until the universe reached half its size. its current age (a little less than 7,000 million years ago).
“Our study reveals that galaxies similar to the Milky Way already existed 11.7 billion years ago,” explained one of the main authors, Luca Costantin, researcher at the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) at the CAB of Madrid.
Costantin has detailed that ceers-2112 is considered a barred spiral galaxy “because it presents a kind of spiral arms that rotate around a central area, where there is a bar-shaped structure of stars. And the most peculiar thing is that the galaxy has the same number of stars that our galaxy had at this time in the universe.”
70% of the galaxies known so far in the nearby universe have this spiral structure
The observation of ceers-2112, the researcher has stressed, has been possible, thanks to “the extraordinary capabilities” of the James Webb space telescope, whose technology and instrumentation have allowed the discovery and study in detail of the morphology of distant galaxies like this one.
Specifically, the scientific data was taken during telescope observations in a region of the sky located between the constellations Ursa Major and Boyero.
And this is just the beginning. Costantin has advanced: "We have between 8 and 10 years of observations from this telescope ahead of us that will allow the discovery of new galaxies and a better understanding of the physical processes that occurred in the first phase of the Universe's existence."
The next moves will therefore involve continuing to study the galaxy found to decipher its chemical composition and understand it better.
“Investigating how galaxies acquire the structure that characterizes them today is essential to understand the processes of formation and evolution of the Universe,” added another of the authors, Cristina Cabello, researcher at the Institute of Particle and Cosmos Physics of the Complutense University. from Madrid.
“The extraordinary observational work described and interpreted in this study identifies the unexpected existence of highly organized and gravitationally bound matter in the form of a barred galaxy, containing around 4 billion solar masses at a time when the Universe only had 2 billion solar masses.” of years,” Juan Pérez-Mercader, principal researcher in Physics applied to Astrophysics and Cosmology at Harvard University, told EFE.
Pérez-Mercader, founder and first director of the CAB, explained that this is research "whose cutting-edge observations and quantitative interpretation suggest that we still have a lot to learn about the evolution of the Universe, and about the history of dark matter." and its interaction with baryonic matter (ordinary matter that forms living beings, planets and stars.) to understand the processes that must have occurred to give rise to a galaxy like this.
This discovery indicates “the presence of a much faster-than-expected evolution of this galaxy, which will likely be the first observed of its kind, and will give much to study to make sense of and include within our understanding of early history and evolution.” towards the puberty of the Universe,” he added.
For the founder of the CAB, this discovery is “a triumph for a new generation of Cosmos scientists who can now carry out and lead magnificent scientific research on an international scale from Spain.”
33 researchers belonging to 29 institutions from 8 countries have participated in this research project. Among the affiliated Spanish institutions, in addition to the CAB, are the Complutense universities of Madrid, La Laguna, Valladolid and the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands.
