Shocking copy of the Milky Way discovered

(NLDO) - The James Webb Space Telescope has just captured a terrifying object, an enlarged version of the Milky Way in its "teenage" days.

According to PHYS, a "monster" copy of the Milky Way - the Milky Way galaxy containing Earth - has just been identified by a research team from Swinburne University of Technology (Australia).

They analyzed in detail the data collected by the world's most powerful space telescope, James Webb, and discovered a giant spiral disk galaxy, "crossing through time" from the world more than 11 billion years ago.

It was named Big Wheel.

The red Big Wheel - a spiral disk galaxy similar to the Milky Way - is more than 11 billion light years away but appears much larger than the bright blue galaxy located just 1.5 billion light years away - Photo: NASA/ESA/CSA

According to Science Alert, disk galaxies often have distinct spiral arms extending outward from a dense central region. Our Milky Way is a disk galaxy.

Previously we thought that the galactic disc formed gradually over a long period of time, as a result of the convergence of inflowing gas over billions of years, as well as the merger of many other galaxies.

The Milky Way once "swallowed" about 20 other galaxies to reach its current size.

Typically, mergers disrupt delicate spiral structures, turning galaxies into more chaotic shapes.

However, the Big Wheel retains its perfect spiral structure, showing that it is still a pristine monster.

Kinematic analysis based on NIRSpec camera data on James Webb confirmed that this galaxy contains a disk rotating at a speed of about 300 km/s.

It is larger than any other kinematically confirmed disk found in the early epochs of the universe and is comparable in size to large disks of today's class.

The radius of the galaxy is about 10 kpc (about 32,000 light years), still smaller than the current Milky Way, but three times larger than galaxies of that era, including the young Milky Way itself.

"This challenges long-held ideas about the evolution of massive galaxies," the authors commented.

Scientists still cannot explain how this monster grew so rapidly in the early universe.

One hypothesis is that there may be a more peaceful type of galaxy merger than what we see today, which does not destroy the structure of the two merged galaxies but instead brings the material from both together in specific directions.

On the other hand, the gas streams that feed the galaxy must carry angular momentum in the same direction as the galactic disc.

All of this suggests that the environment to which this galaxy belongs, a large-scale structure called a primordial galaxy cluster with an extremely dense environment - packed with galaxies, gas and black holes - is a mysterious territory waiting to be explored.

Source: https://nld.com.vn/phat-hien-ban-sao-gay-soc-cua-dai-ngan-ha-196250320112912318.htm