Posted on 12/30/2024 12:30:02 PM PST by Red Badger
The distant galaxy has all the structure of a modern spiral galaxy (the object next to it is another galaxy in the foreground).
Image credit: Xiao et al., arXiv 2024 (CC BY 4.0)
It has been just over three years since JWST was launched into space and in that time, the telescope has dramatically expanded our understanding of the distant universe. Among the important findings is the discovery of very young galaxies that already looked like their more senior counterparts in the local universe, and a recent study has shown a spiral galaxy that already had everything modern ones do just 1.13 billion years after the Big Bang.
The galaxy has been nicknamed Zhúlóng, which means "Torch Dragon". It is a spiral galaxy like our own, the Milky Way. Zhúlóng also shows a clear division between its central concentration of stars, known as the bulge, and the disk where the spiral arms are located. As reported in a yet-to-be peer-reviewed paper, this is the most distant galaxy with a bulge, disk, and spiral arms known to date.
The bulge is believed to form first and for that reason, it has the older stars. Over time, the disk grows and the spiral arms form creating what we recognize and classify as a spiral galaxy. The observations of Zhúlóng show a clear distinction between the bulge and the disk – but that’s not all. The galaxy is also massive, weighing around 100 billion times our Sun (roughly what the Milky Way weighs today) having had over 13 billion years to grow.
With this discovery, JWST demonstrates that the process of formation and evolution of spiral galaxies can happen in as little as a billion years, even though it likely took many other galaxies billions of years to get as big and with a morphology like the more modern spiral galaxies. Zhúlóng is forming stars at an impressive rate, much more prolific than our own galaxy. However, compared to similar massive galaxies at that time, it is pretty quiet.
Galaxies also grow through collisions with small and big galaxies. These mergers were a lot more common back in the past when the universe was denser. Still, it does not seem like the galaxy is undergoing anything like that now. If it had had mergers, the events would have been much quicker than they are today, leading to very efficient growth.
“How a morphologically mature galaxy that resembles nearby massive spirals can form in this environment remains an open question, but the discovery of this source is a first step and provides an important constraint on galaxy formation models,” the authors wrote in the paper.
The existence of Zhúlóng adds to the growing evidence that the way galaxies are born and grow in the formative years of the cosmos is far from understood. Even among massive galaxies from the time, Zhúlóng stands out. Maybe there is more than one way to build a big galaxy, or maybe there are slow and fast ways to build spirals.
The team is planning to follow up with JWST and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array to understand this galaxy better, as well as to continue to discover more galaxy morphologies at these great distances from us.
The study has been posted to the preprint server arXiv and is yet to be peer-reviewed.
James Carville description found on police blotter.
Everything’s made in China.
dang. oh well, Carl..., guess we gotta double the age and size of the universe again.
either that, or cut that pesky Hubble constant in half, Bill.
It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out. - Proverbs 25:2
btw Bill, what happened to all those drones that kept getting in our way?
The galaxy has been nicknamed Zhúlóng (燭龍), which means “Torch Dragon” …By whom, exactly? And what exactly is “epic” about that?
They don’t even know if they are drones. They have no clue what they are. “Drones” is just a convenient word used to pretend that the govt has a clue about what is going on.
Since the Milky Way Galaxy is stated as being 600,00 trillion miles across, and the JWST is located at Lagrange Point 2 (L2), a gravitationally stable location in space approximately 932,000 miles away from Earth. L2 lies opposite the Sun, allowing the telescope to maintain a constant temperature and stay in line with Earth as it orbits the Sun.
My question is, how can we be sure of the distances it sees are accurate, and to what degree are they accurate?
Shoulda called it the “Baron Mikel Scicluna” Galaxy. That would have been epic.
Although not a spiral galaxy, I believe the galaxy identified as IC 1101 is much larger and possibly the largest entity ever discovered in the Universe. It is reputed to be 5.5 million LYs on its longest axis and is said to contain over 100 trillion suns. Its distance from Earth is one billion LYs.
The distance light travels in a year is six trillion miles.
Very good verse. I see it in maybe a different light. Yhx and may the lord bless you.
Short answer is we can’t.
It’s like looking around in a Hall of Mirrors at the county fair..............
I have doubts though, that we will ever resettle a different planet, because the evidence points that it is an unrealistic goal. Either the planets close enough to us do not offer the necessary basics to sustain life, or they are out of reach or do not exist elsewhere in the Universe.
But then hey, who really knows? 🤣
I applaud those who search, but I think resources could be used better to improve like on this planet.
Thanks for sharing your opinion though. I never really contemplated exploring the Universe, because I am extremely claustrophobic to the point that I can't even stand watching someone crawl around in caves with very small tight tunnels. I have to walk away. The though of being stuck in a capsule with no clear destination, is just not for me. 🙂👍
Cosmology should be spelled ‘CAUSE-MOLOGY’...........
Because I think there is a lot of guessing going on within the profession. 😋
Every new ‘discovery’ they have to tweak their theories.
Why can’t they just accept that God created it all for our amusement?..............
Ah, a most excellent question you have asked. 🙂👍
My belief is that they are fighting to control the narrative and if they admit that all that exists is the creation of an intelligent entity, means that they cannot control the narrative. Controlling the narrative is a form of power that they will never relinquish by admitting the truth.
All a part of the ‘strong delusion’.................
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