One of the most distant spiral galaxies ever observed by astronomers has puzzled researchers somewhat, as it resembles our Milky Way in structure.
The galaxy REBELS-25 was discovered with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), according to a study accepted for publications in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (via Futurism). Thanks to the extremely high resolution of ALMA, astronomers were able to see REBELS-25 in almost complete detail, noticing large spiral arms and an elongated central band — similar to our Milky Way
The most interesting thing here is that the galaxy looks incredible «neat» — and this is despite the fact that astronomers saw it as it was when the age of the Universe was only 700 million years (only 5% of its current age of 13.8 billion). The age of the Milky Way, for comparison, is — 13.6 billion years
In other words: researchers thought that it would take 13.6 billion years for a galaxy to look as «ordered» as ours — while REBELS-25 shows that 700 million years is enough.
«A Milky Way-like galaxy challenges our understanding of how quickly galaxies in the early Universe evolve into the ordered galaxies of today’s cosmos», — explained Lucy Rowland, lead author of the study and a doctoral student at Leiden University.
The team hopes to continue the REBELS-25 study with the James Webb Space Telescope.